


Zero no Tsukaima: an UnFamiliar Tale

by David375



Category: Sonic the Hedgehog - All Media Types, ゼロの使い魔 | Zero no Tsukaima | The Familiar of Zero
Genre: Crossover, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-17
Updated: 2018-05-20
Packaged: 2018-08-23 01:09:07
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 117
Words: 357,651
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8307970
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/David375/pseuds/David375
Summary: Summoned to this alternate world, this yellow fox struggles to make his way home under new masters. Will he ever escape Halkeginia? Who will he leave behind to recover the friends he's lost? First Fanfiction I've written, rated M for violence, language, and occasional sexually suggestive content in line with Zero no Tsukaima.





	1. Season 1 Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> PREFACE:
> 
> Hi everyone! Thanks for stopping by, even just to read these first few words. I just wanted to give you a quick heads-up about what you'll be getting into if you decide to tackle reading this whole thing. There are no spoilers here, so feel free to read this preface or skip straight to the next chapter if you like to go in blind!
> 
> First, the entire draft is technically uploaded on fanfiction.net under the same name as it is here. I am working hard on revising the entire story and uploading it here as I revise it. You are welcome to go read the draft version (that I'm updating simultaneously as I post here), but just know that any chapter beyond what's posted here is subject to change.
> 
> Next up, there are some important changes to Tails that aren't mentioned for a ways in, but they are implied if you follow his timeline as consecutively as possible (which is stated somewhat early on); Namely, he's older than the games, TV shows, or comics, at 15 years old. This isn't stated explicitly until the end of Season 1, but it's useful to know. This also means that he's taller – for the sake of reason, I put him at about 4' 9'', or to put it in contrast with Zero no Tsukaima characters: one inch taller than Tabitha, ten inches shorter than Kirche, eleven inches shorter than Saito, etc etc. While it can be glazed over pretty easily, there are some details and scenes later on that wouldn't quite make sense for Tails to only be 2'8'' as he was when he was 8 in the video games, as well as his lack of aging across his different appearances in different stories. It wouldn't make sense for him to be eight both when Sonic X was going down AND when he was working in Knothole, since I went and put them in some canonical order and they both DEFINITELY took years apiece.
> 
> Thirdly, this story is based primarily off of the anime adaptation of The Familiar of Zero, not the manga (otherwise this story would have well beyond breached a thousand pages of 12pt Times New Roman font writing. For reference, the main file is almost 900 pages long as it is). Of course, I take some deviations that story to keep things from being purely a "insert character here" story.
> 
> Finally, I LOVE putting little pop culture/meme/anime references in my writing, like a little easter-egg hunt! I keep a running list of every one I've consciously used, and plan to post it at the end of the story once I finish up editing (as I may slip in a few more if it doesn't break up the flow of the writing). See if you can find them all!
> 
> Anyways, that's all I have to talk about for now! I hope you enjoy my first fanfiction as much as I have!
> 
> David A.

**Season 1 Chapter 1**  
  
"I'm Home!" Tails yelled, slamming the door shut with a smart tap with his tail as he ran. The twin-tailed anthropomorphic fox vaulted over the sofa blocking his path to the kitchen, skidding around the corner as his feet made contact with the kitchen tile. From the moment he reached the door some four seconds ago, he knew someone would be in trouble, because he smelled toasted bread, which could only mean one thing.

Sure enough, an all-too familiar blue hedgehog was sitting at his table, eating HIS sourdough and HIS chili that he'd been preparing for hours.

"Dangit, Sonic, how many times do I have to tell you not to eat my chili! I spend ages preparing it, and hardly get to have any before you … ABSORB it into your black hole of a stomach!" Tails blurted. Then, he realized, he was making it for both of them, and it was time for dinner, so in the end it didn't really matter anyways.

"Chill out, little bro! I left plenty for you, and got your special sourdough buns toasted while you were gone, so it's all ready," Sonic said.

Tails gave his friend an odd glance as he kicked off his shoes by the doorframe. "Really? How did you manage to do that? I thought I hadn't fixed the kitchen plugs yet, after you ruined them all…"

"Yeah, well, I kinda took your toaster oven back to your room and used the plugs there, although I got a few crumbs in the carpet. Sorry 'bout that."

"Fine… At least you managed to do it without burning yourself."

"Did that too, you know. Small flare-up, so I hope you like your buns a bit darker than usual."

"Dangit Sonic! Whatever, I'm starving, so let's just eat and clean the kitchen up"

"I'm gonna have to leave that one to you, Tails. Amy's corralled me into a date right after this, and if I miss that, I'm a goner. You know how it is."

"Fine…" Tails sighed. At least the chili wasn't completely gone, although there weren't any more hot dogs to be had. Not that he wanted the carbon-fouled buns that went with them, either. Before sitting down, the yellow two-tailed fox gathered up a set of utensils and grabbed some cheese and Tobasco from the fridge. This was his last bottle from Chris' world, so he'd have to analyze it and re-create the recipe when he got the chance. Just as he sat down to enjoy his meal with Sonic, a buzz went off. Sonic raised his wrist to take a peek at his wrist communicator, only to don a mask of pure fear. "Shit, bud, I gotta run. Mis-read the time for the date, the movie starts in 2 minutes and she's already inside. Got any power rings that could get me there faster?"

"Yeah, there's some in the box to the right of the door. Take as many as you need, I restock them as they're used," Tails replied.

"Thanks for understanding, bro. We'll hang out another evening, alright? Sorry 'bout this," Sonic yelled from the living room. "Gotta jui-" he heard Sonic yell, although the latter bit of the phrase was cut off by the sonic boom that put Tails face-down on the table in pain from the sound. "I wish he would remember to shut the door. I sound-proofed the building for a reason" Tails groaned, rubbing his head.

He grabbed his bowl of chili and trotted through the halls to the elevator down to his lower workshop, taking a few bites as he went. He wiped his mouth from the past few bites on his glove and punched in a password to the elevator, causing the door to slide open with the soft clatter of the suspended doors. The elevator began its gentle descent after a second, followed by the thirty second journey to the hangar floor that Tails took to finish off his chili.

The elevator slowed to a crawl and finally a dead stop before the doors slid open with the ding of an electronic bell. He turned to a small slot to the side of the elevator and set his chili bowl in the small cubby-hole. At the press of a button, the bowl was sent whizzing off to the kitchen on a small elevator in the wall, where his whole-house conveyor would set the bowl on his kitchen counter. He then turned his attention to a large, circular orange machine in the corner of the Blue Typhoon's hangar; the old Power Ring generator from Knothole that Uncle Chuck had dredged up from the pond bottom and entrusted to him after Knothole was disbanded. He walked over to the machine and plucked out a few Power Rings, and set them in the same cubby, entering in a new destination before pressing the start button.

"There, that should deal with the evening chores. Now to get to the real work," Tails thought. The "real work", as it turned out to be, was tinkering with a new upgrade for the X Tornado, his personal twin-engine jet. The upgrade would hopefully replace part of the Power Ring storage space with a functional, micro-sized Ring generator that would provide a constant supply similar to what powered his T-Buster arm cannon he used on occasion, but with a larger storage capacity. If all went well, it could possibly be enough to replace the Chaos Emeralds as a solution for unlimited flight time. Tails pulled up a quick display from his HUD tool and turned on some casual work music that blasted from the overhead speakers, and got set into the job.

* * *

 

Several hours passed before Tails stepped back to observe his work, wiping his forehead on the back of his greasy gloves. "I wonder how Sonic's doing with Amy," Tails pondered. "He hasn't contacted me by wristcomm, so Amy must have booked a double viewing as punishment for being late."

Suddenly, a green bubble soundlessly burst into existence nearby, about five feet away and hovering a foot off the ground. "What the heck? This isn't part of my hologram software…" Tails thought, rubbing his eyes. He raised his HUD tool and tried to give the bubble a quick analysis scan, but the program refused to read it, as if it weren't there. "Weird," he said out loud. "If it's not picking it up, it's not physical. Perhaps a wormhole back to Chris' world?" a voice in the back of his head nagged at him. He darted over to the nearest workbench, grabbed a piece of note paper from a pile of stationery, and sketched out a crude color drawing, with a quick explanation of what he planned to do.

"There," Tails thought. "Now, if it is another wormhole to Chris' world, Sonic will know where I am and that I'll be in good hands, and can probably make it back with Chris' warpgate, if it wasn't demolished." Tails pressed a button on his wristcomm to materialize his T-Buster from hammerspace, a tool he hadn't used since everyone got in a big fuss over Emerl. A quick check through the internals and micro Ring generator showed that everything was still in functional order, reassuring the fox-like Mobian. Before starting his tests, he replaced his gloves with a fresh pair from a drawer in one of his workbenches, and then finally strolled over to the green orb. He gave it a quick poke, which made it quiver like the surface of a loose gel. Curious, he then stuck his hand inside, only to be pulled in rapidly by some unknown force. With a quick yelp, the portal dissipated with a brief flash, taking Tails with it.


	2. Season 1 Chapter 2

SEASON 1 CHAPTER 2

Tails was blinded by a flash of light, followed by a sudden falling sensation, then a hard impact from behind, then in front as he bounced. He was sore all over from the landing, unable to concentrate as his senses snapped back to reality. When he had finally collected himself, he found himself surrounded by a large group of humans. They seemed to be about sixteen to eighteen, all pale-skinned and sporting common outfit of white button-up shirts, dark cloaks, purple or navy slacks for the men, and thigh-length pleated navy skirts for the women. A massive stone tower stood above him, surrounded by smaller dome-topped towers and a perimeter wall that encompassed large swaths of grassy lawn.

There was a lot of chittering from the humans, but Tails was unable to distinguish the language, even after the years he spent studying Earth languages both with and after leaving Chris for Mobius with databases he'd saved. Thoughts raced through his mind as he tried to understand, to pick up any trace of familiarity. "The syllable placements and pronunciations sound almost like an English accent, but it's not…" he thought in confusion, watching as the students slowly circled around him in amazement. After a few moments of gazing around, he realized that someone else had fallen next to him; a black-haired boy dressed in a blue and white sweater and black jeans. Tails began to stand up, but was approached by one of the girls of the pack, a young lady with long, lower-back-length pink hair. The girl bent down and leaned forward, as if to kiss him, but Tails quickly slid out from under her and bolted up to his feet. "What the heck?!" he thought, eyeing the girl as she stood up. He could see that she was rather angry, looking down in humiliation as the others laughed at her.

The blue-clad boy was now up and about, also wondering what was going on. He let out a burst of frenzied speech, which Tails recognized as Japanese from Chris' world. "Great, at least I know where he's from. This doesn't look like Japan did in the pictures, though," Tails thought. He slowly stepped back and watched as the pink-haired girl grew closer to the boy, taking his face in her hands and kissing him on the lips. The Japanese boy immediately fell to the ground, writhing in pain as his skin turned bright red like some sort of nasty, sudden allergic reaction.

When the boy finally registered what was going on, he looked up at Tails and uttered some unintelligible words through his pain before blacking out. "Oh, crap!" Tails yelped, spinning around and taking off for the nearest place to hide. He bolted for a nearby open-air hallway, taking off into the depths of the large central spire with the horde of students hot on his heels. He weaved through hallways, but eventually came up against a dead-end.

"Crap, I have no time for this," he groaned, looking at the doors that lined the hallway. Not hesitating to look over his shoulder, he sprinted forward and threw himself against the wall feet-first. He kicked hard against the wall and spun his twin tails like helicopter blades, giving him a quick dose of additional lift that sent him sailing over the heads of the students that had just rounded the corner. Landing on his feet, he took off down the opposite hallway, putting distance between himself and his pursuers until he came to a large doorway that was hanging open slightly. He slipped inside and slammed the door behind him, dropping the heavy cross-bar lock across the door. "That should buy me some time," he thought.

Taking a breather, Tails surveyed the room. Four massive dining tables lined with hundreds of ornate chairs filled the room, like something out of a popular movie series from Chris' world, complete with the food, large decorated windows, and floating candles high above.

"Wait a second, floating CANDLES?!" Tails exclaimed, doing a double-take. Observing the candles, he shook his head in disbelief. "Probably just fishline hangers that are hard to see. Very cool, though! Must be some sort of event. Probably why I'm here, too."

The heavy double-doors shook behind Tails as he strolled through the room, snapping him back to reality. In a moment of panic, he bolted for the far end of the room, where a large central chair behind the head dining table lay. He dragged the heavy chair over to the back wall and climbed up onto the headrest in hopes of reaching one of the windows at the back of the room. With a leap and a burst of his tails, he was able to fly up and grab the window ledge to hoist himself up. He looked around to see the group standing in the now-open doorway, pointing something at him. Yanking a small, hinged section of the heavy plate-glass window open to leap out, a sudden pain shot across his back as he was violently flung out of the window by an explosion. "Jeez, they ARE trying to kill me!" he cried as he fell.

Slowing his fall with a burst of his tails, Tails dropped to the ground and ran into another side-corridor of the main tower, stopping to catch his breath. Without a moment of respite to be had, however, a smaller group of the chasing students rounded the corner to face him. "I've gotta put an end to this," he thought. He took off down the hall, into one of the five towers surrounding the central spire. Flying up the stairs with the assistance of his tails, he took off down the hall toward the next set of stairs at the opposite end of the hall.

Without warning, a door ahead of him opened as Tails was busy stealing a glance over his shoulder while he ran. He barely had time to react as he ran into another human that stepped into the hall, colliding with her. Tails instinctively wrapped his tails around the person's head and back as they slammed to the stone floor. The clatter of wood on stone filled the air as the human's tall wooden staff hit the floor. Pushing himself up, Tails found himself staring face-to-face with a short, blue-haired girl with striking blue eyes. He noticed that her outfit was a bit different than the others; The inside of her cloak was a majestic dark purple, in addition to red-framed glasses and white stockings.

Tails quickly stood up and hoisted the girl to her feet. He picked up her staff, handed it back to her, and bowed deeply, hoping she would see it as an act of asking forgiveness. Behind him, his pursuers' footsteps grew closer and closer, filling him with a sense of dread. With a sudden jerk, Tails was launched into the air by some mysterious body-filling force, as if he were now weightless to the world. Behind him, a few boys from the group of humans, probably gloating or wondering what to do. One yelled back down the stairs to catch the attention of the larger group.

"This ends now, or I'll end up like that other guy," Tails thought. When he came within reach of the ceiling, he used his tails to push off the ceiling to twist himself around toward the ground. He gave a button on his wristcomm a light tap, drawing his red-colored T-Buster arm cannon from hammerspace. To the student group's surprise, he unleashed a series of small low-amp, high-volt blasts to subdue them. As soon as the students fell, the mysterious force ended, dropping Tails to the ground face-first in front of the blue-haired girl, who stood silently watching. Shaking himself to his senses, he quickly recovered and continued up the tower as fast as possible, reaching the highest floor after two more flights of stairs, only to be caught at a dead end once more.

In a panic, he quickly checked all the doors, only to find them locked. Only the window at the end of the hallway remained, which he reached before the student group finally reached his floor. The same pink-haired girl he'd seen earlier, now ferociously mad, stomped down the hall with a finely-shaped wooden stick of some sort in hand. Tails spun around and landed a solid punch with his T-Buster on the glass, smashing out the window with a loud crash. Just as he leaped through the jagged glass, another explosion caught him from behind, searing his fur and propelling him toward the ground with incredible speed. A desperate attempt to stabilize himself by flight couldn't stop him as he rocketed toward the ground, slamming into the soft grassy earth with a dull thud. Tails barely managed to roll onto his back before everything started to fade, his senses slipping from him. With a brief flash, the sun blinded his eyes momentarily before everything went black.


	3. Season 1 Chapter 3

Season 1 Chapter 3

As the sun beat down on his face, Tails cracked his eyes open, wishing to go back to bed again. He moved every muscle in his body as discreetly as he could to ensure nothing was broken or out of place. Every muscle in his back was sore beyond belief, but otherwise he seemed fine. He looked to either side of him, noting a line of medical beds on either side. The Japanese boy he had seen earlier was laying in the bed next to him, staring at the stone ceiling. After a taking a moment to ensure the room was otherwise clear, he decided to break the ice with this new kid.

"Hey, can you understand me? What's your name?" Tails asked. The boy looked over in his direction with a look of confusion and fright, unable to understand what he had just said. "Think, Tails, Think! Surely you remember some Japanese from Earth. Come on!"   
Tails thought to himself in frustration, rubbing his forehead. He looked at the boy and gave him a smile, careful not to bare his fangs and scare him. He motioned to the window and made a series of hand gestures that looked like a window opening. After a few takes, the boy understood and sat up in his bed, twisting around to push open the window. A slight breeze filled the room, the sweet fresh air filling Tails' mind for a moment. "Good. At least I have an escape route now."

After several minutes of waiting, the main door swung open on its creaky hinges. The angry pink-haired girl, the blue-haired girl Tails had ran into, and a shapely red-haired girl walked in alongside a middle-aged bald man, and an older white-haired man. They proceeded to talk amongst each other, completely oblivious to Tails as he eyed the window, ready to pounce at a moment's notice. As soon as all eyes were off him, Tails bolted out of bed and darted for the window, only to be yanked back in by some invisible force once more. The odd power levitated him to his bed and sat him down, with all eyes watching him now. The red-haired girl continued to speak as the old white-haired man waved his walking stick at him.

"-I told you he'd be trouble, Headmaster. But that's why I like him," the red-haired girl stated, suddenly speaking clear, plain English.

"Can you understand us now, fox?" the old man asked.

Tails rubbed his head. "Yeah… I don't know how waving a stick at me helped, but I can hear you just fine now. What did you do?"

"A simple translation spell. How are you feeling? I heard you took quite a plunge out one of our dormitory towers in a rather, shall we say, explosive fashion."

"Yeah, although I think you gotta put more warning labels on your windows," Tails replied. "Every one I break or open somehow blows up."

The old man glanced nervously at the pink-haired girl before responding. "Well, you'd best thank Louise here for that. It's a specialty of hers."

"I hope you learned a lesson not to run away, you stupid dog," the pink-haired girl named Louise stated angrily.

Tails let out a low growl "I am NOT a dog, I am a fox and a Mobian. Get your facts straight."

"How DARE you speak to a noble like tha-" Louise began to cry, but was cut off by the old man. "Louise, that's quite enough. Anyhow, I am not sure if this will work properly, but it's best we try, given the unusual circumstances. Ladies?"

The three girls are approaching Tails on either side of his bed. They all leaned in close to his face, with Blue dead center, Louise on the right, and Red on the left. Tails pressed as far back against the wall as he could to avoid the three girls but they eventually caught him in three simultaneous kisses. As the unknown poison worked its course, Tails' body temperature spiked as his skin grew red underneath his fur. The three girls backed off as he struggled to contain the pain, flipping his bed pillow over to find some cool surface to lie on. As soon as the heat had started, it faded away into a comfortable, normal temperature.

"What did you do to me just now?" Tails said, breathing heavily.

"Simply the rune-etching process, absolutely nothing to worry about," The middle-aged man remarked. "So, where is the mark?"

Tails stared at the group blankly. "What're you talking about? I'm not seeing any marks," he replied, looking over his body. "Where would it normally be?"

"You would have received one just now, most likely on your hand."

"Ok," Tails replied, peeling off his gloves from his sweaty, clammy hands. Nothing was immediately visible, but a quick brush of his fur on the back of his hand revealed some tattoo-like markings at the skin level. "Yeah, that's new…"

The middle-aged man took Tails by the hand and brushed through the fur for a quick look. He furrowed his brow in thought after thoroughly studying the writing-esque blotches. "That's it, but it's not one I've seen before! Very interesting… I must go see if I can find it in any of my reference texts."

"Very well, Colbert. Report back what you find. I'll be in my office," the older man said, heading toward the door. " Ladies, work among yourselves to arrange how to deal with Mr. Fox, please."

The middle-aged man named Colbert and the older man stepped out of the medical hall, the door slamming shut behind them with a loud boom. Finally away from their superiors, the three girls began whispering between themselves. Tails strained to pick up moments of the conversation, piecing together what he heard.

"-so because I got the bad Familiar, I should get to keep this one too! I even summoned it," Louise said, glancing back at the inquisitive fox.

The red-haired girl shook her head. "No way! I helped capture it, and we all already have one, so we'll share it, one-day rotation to start. Tabitha, is that fair?"

"Agreed," the blue haired girl replied, almost inaudibly. Tails could barely pick up what she was saying, but decided it was about time to butt in. "What are you guys agreeing on over there? If it pertains to me, I'd prefer to know," he asked.

The three girls looked between themselves, and then back at him. "To put it simply, you are our Familiar, a servant with many purposes such as basic service, defense in combat, and more," Louise said indignantly. "Kirche over here had an AWFUL idea that we should rotate you between us three, every morning."

Tails was floored. "Say WHAT now? I can't be a slave! I need to get home, to clean up my kitchen and finish my work on the Typhoon, and water Cosmo! I mean, the auto-greenhouse should hold out for a long time before it needs maintenance, but still…"

In the background, Saito looked up from staring at the red-haired girl's rack to Tails and uttered some unintelligible Japanese. The red-haired girl they called Kirche nudged Louise in the shoulder, nodding to the boy. "Hey, I think your other 'familiar' needs you, Zero. You might need a translation spell for him, though," she teased.

Louise looked like she was ready to backhand Kirche across the face, but withheld her anger as she stomped over to his bedside, grabbing him by the ear. "SHUT UP!" she yelled, idiotically hoping that yelling louder would help the boy understand. Baffled that the boy simply broke her grip and nursed his ear while muttering unintelligibly, she drew her wand and pointed it at him. The boy stared curiously at the tip of the stick Louise held inches from his nose as Tails scrambled out of bed, taking cover behind the thick mattress. He could see as Kirche's face twist into a mask of fear as Louise chanted some short spell, followed by a massive explosion that shook the air and filled the room with dark smoke.

The fumes filled Tails' lungs as he pressed his face to the mattress, extracting any clean air from between the fibers that he could. The smoke slowly cleared through the open window over Saito's bed, revealing a badly-charred Saito plastered to a blackened, partially smoldering bed and a dirt-coated Louise standing nearby. Kirche emerged from cover behind a privacy curtain of another bed, while Tabitha simply stood where she had, disinterestedly perusing her book as a puddle of water spread out around her feet and base of her staff.

"You almost got us all killed, Louise! Jeez!" Kirche yelled, walking back to the center of the room where Tabitha waited, casually dusting off her shoulders. "That's no way to treat your Familiar. Stuff like that can get him killed, or possibly even discharged from you on abuse!"

The Japanese boy peeled himself off of the bed, an outline of white fabric traced beneath where his body lay. "Ugh… Damn, that hurt," he mumbled, rubbing his eyes and face with his grime-coated hands. "How I'm not dead is beyond me."  
"You see! I can perform magic just fine!" Louise said, grinning in triumph. "The explosion was just an effect."

Tails wiped his face as Kirche gawked at the boy, flabbergasted that the spell worked. She collected herself and averted her eyes. "Probably just a fluke. I wouldn't count on it to save you on a test."

"I'm taking him to class with me to prove my magic DOES work, and then you'll be the one looking like an idiot!" Louise cried, grabbing Saito by the cuff of his jacket and dragging him out of bed. "The fox will start with me this evening, so I can drill some rules into him. If you two screw this up, you're dead." With that, she stormed out of the room, towing an oddly complacent Saito by the cuff of his jacket. Kirche and Tabitha looked at each other for a moment before walking toward the door.

"Wait!" Tails called, standing up from behind the bed. "What do I do?"

"Well, I guess you can come with us to class…" Kirche replied, looking to Tabitha for confirmation. "Normally, Familiars would just wait in their master's rooms, or outside if they are too big. Then again, since she's dragging that boy to class, I don't see why we can't, either."

Tails nodded and walked over to the waiting girls, following them as they turned to leave the room. Kirche filled the air with idle chatter as the three walked through the hallways, arriving at a large set of doors. Tabitha gently opened the door and slipped into the room beyond, followed by Kirche and Tails. Inside a large semi-circle, amphitheater-style classroom sat some fifty or sixty students in two-man desks, all staring in his direction and muttering between themselves. "This is awkward," Tails thought, sticking closely behind the two girls in front of him. Kirche split off to take her seat next to another student, while Tabitha took her seat in an empty desk. Tails quietly pulled out the chair next to her and took a seat, twiddling his thumbs as he looked around the room.

A few minutes passed, and nothing had yet happened. The muttering in the room hadn't ceased as students around the room shot Tails and the Japanese boy various looks, making Tails nervous. "Hey, Tabitha," he said, nudging her arm with his elbow. "Are you sure it's ok that I'm here? These guys aren't taking it too well, I think…"

Tabitha simply nodded in reply and looked up from her book, scanning the room. Wherever her gaze went, students staring and whispering at Tails averted their gaze and shut up, as if trying to avoid angering Tabitha. "Dang… Must be the class president or something. Definitely commands respect," Tails thought.

When she was finished, Tails promptly thanked her and went back to staring around the room. Bored with waiting, he drew his T-Buster and withdrew a Power Ring from its storage slot, setting it on the table. Students around the room gazed in fascination as he picked up the large, golden, glowing ring and casually spun it on the table on its edge, watching as the circle formed an illusionary sphere of yellow light as it spun. He didn't get to play around for long, as an older lady in formal robes walked into the room, silencing the class. "About time things started," Tails thought as he took the Power Ring and replaced it in the T-Buster's storage slot, stowing the T-Buster back in hammerspace with a tap of his wristcomm.

"Good morning, students," the lady began. "My name is Mrs. Cheveruse, although I'm sure many of you already know of me. Today we'll be studying alchemy, the transformation of materials…"


	4. Season 1 Chapter 4

Season 1 Chapter 4:

After an intense session with the class, taking notes and drawing sketches at high speed on borrowed paper and pen, Tails was exhausted but still excited. When the class dismissed, he ran up to the professor and started belting out questions.

"Miss Cheveruse, what fuels magic? Can everyone do it? What is the spell-casting language based on? Is there some sort of special requirements? How ca-"

The older lady held up her hands, silencing Tails. "Slow down there, fox. To start, what is your name? Then we can get to the questions"

"Miles Prower mam, although my friends just call me Tails."

"Very well, Miles. Magic can only be wielded by those of noble birth, only after many years of study. Most standard magic can be used without any serious cost, but some higher level spells can leave the user exhausted. You would be best off talking to Professor Colbert on the topic. He has many books that could help you."

"Thank you, mam! I'll be sure to pay him a visit."

With that, Louise, Kirche, Tabitha, and Saito had gathered themselves and were ready to leave. The group marched down the stairs to their respective dorms alongside the rest of the class. Little did they know, an ambush was waiting at the base of the stairwell. A pair of boys rounded the corner.

"Miles Prower. Heh. Looks silly, and the way he was with Miss Kirche entering class as a Familiar... As dumb as I expected! A lesson might rectify the issue." Said one of the boys, with brown hair and a muscular build.

"Agreed. No one but Nobles should be allowed around Miss Kirche like that, familiar or not!" said the other boy, a blond-haired, slightly-built boy.

"Whoa, guys, I'm just her familiar. Besides, I already told her that I have a girlfriend, so she's all yours…" Tails said.

"That doesn't excuse your disrespectful actions toward Nobles. Only students are allowed to attend classes. I'll be glad to make a nice coat from you, if you show up in class again," the brown-haired boy replied.

The blond-haired boy looked at his partner with a sly smile "Let's just get it out of the way now. Yeah! We challenge you to a duel, you versus us!"

Saito and Louise were too busy arguing, and Tabitha was absorbed in her book. Deciding it was her responsibility, Kirche chimed in with a quick "Sure!". "We'll be out by the gate a half hour after lunch! The winner gets a date with me!" she said, followed by a wink toward Tails.

"Very well. Be prepared, Miles, because we won't hold back," Brown-hair retorted. The two sauntered away, laughing and chatting to each other, most likely their date plans.

Tails shot Kirche a questioning look. "Why'd you do that? If I lose, you're gonna have to go out with those jerks, and I don't think those plans they were discussing were just a cup of tea, scones, and an evening board game," he blurted once the boys were out of earshot.

"I don't like them either, and I want to see them lose. Besides, this is a great chance to show me how strong you are," she added with another wink.

Tails rubbed the bridge of his nose with his fingers and sighed. "What are the usual rules? I should probably do at least a little prep. I haven't had to do hand-to-hand combat for what… a couple years?."

"Anything goes, so you'd best be careful. If it were just one of them, a swordsman would have no problem closing the gap before they could launch a spell, but with two, you might get pinned between them."

"Oh, I don't think that will be the problem, trust me. I had an idea. I'll show you after lunch."

* * *

 

Lunch passed quickly as Tails took the food he was offered from the kitchen and ate outside, rushing through his meal in anticipation. Clearing his plate, he darted though the central spire-like building until he found the stairs to the top, finding a large office-like room currently empty. Pressing his face to one of the two windows at the back of the office, he could see the boys march out into the front lawn in front of the tower's massive double doors, followed by a small entourage of spectators. "Ten to one odds this will work" he thought, unlatching the window and sticking his head outside to test the wind. Focusing as hard as he could, he could make out a few phrases of the conversation between Kirche and the two boys below.

After a few seconds, the two boys pulled something out of their pockets. "We start the duel now. If he doesn't show within three minutes, he forfeits the match," one of them announced.

"Bingo," Tails thought aloud. He summoned his T-Buster with his wristcomm and tapped a button on the red device encasing his right hand, opening a small slot. Extracting a golden Power Ring from the machine, he stepped up onto the windowsill and took a deep breath before stepping out, plummeting to the ground. To Tails' luck, the two boys were dumb enough to stand still at such a moment, leaving themselves exposed to an attack. As he fell, he used his tails to slow himself down and direct his fall, accounting for the wind that whistled in his ears and tried to push him aside. Closing within forty feet, he activated the Power Ring, feeling the energy course through his body as an aura of golden light surrounded him.

All the brown-haired boy registered was a high-pitched whistling of the wind, then excruciating pain from shattered shoulders, and then unconsciousness as Tails slammed down on top of him. A loud thud filled the air as the two slammed to the ground, the soft earth giving way under the blow like molding clay. Blondie had hardly registered the fact that his partner had been KO'd before Tails hopped off the brown-haired boy and caught him in a linebacker's charge. The fox pinned the boy up against the tower doors in less than a second, slamming him into the thick wooden doors with such force that wooden splinters flew from the impact, the crackle of breaking bones obscured by crash of fracturing wood. As soon as Blondie fell unconscious, Tails hauled the boy back to his fallen partner by the collar of his shirt. Everyone stood agape with awe, and broke out into cheers when Tails plucked Brown-hair out of his crater, and carried them both over his shoulders over to a fresh patch of grass. With a quick shake of his body, he dispelled the remaining energy of the Power Ring, although he wish he hadn't. The body of students watching the match finally had broken out of their stupor over the victory, and rushed over to Tails, hoisting him high over their heads and shouting congratulations. After about thirty seconds, enough people had dispersed back to their daily schedule that he could get free of the group, back to his friends who were waiting patiently on the side.

"Wow Tails, that was amazing! Where did you learn to do that? And how did you survive the fall?" Kirche asked, still shocked by the turn of events. "I honestly thought you had ran or were distracted."

"There was a time I would've run away, but I've gotten over that," Tails replied, shaking his head. "I've never been a fan of bullies. As to how I survived, it's called a Power Ring. If you were looking up at me, you might have seen a bright flash when I activated it. It provides a fair bit of extra energy, allowing me to survive that stuff."

Unknowingly, Mr. Colbert was watching the match from the side hallway, and overheard the comments about the Power Rings. He quickly ran up to the group and called out to Tails, catching the fox's attention. "Miles, could I borrow you for a minute? The headmaster and I have something to say to you, upstairs in his office."

"Sure," Tails responded. "Should everyone come?"

"No, just you for now. We'll decide whether or not it should stay confidential after we talk."

Tails followed Professor Colbert into the central tower, climbing the massive staircase to the tower's top. Halfway up, the fox spooled up his tails and began to fly up the stairs. The whirring noise caught Professor Colbert's attention, causing him to turn around. "How are you flying?!" he gasped. "Is it the same magic as earlier?"

"No, this isn't magic, and neither was the fight earlier," Tails replied, shaking his head. "It's something I've always been able to do. I used it to slow my fall so I didn't kill that guy when I landed. Even if I hadn't slowed myself, I probably still would have survived relatively fine thanks to the Power Ring, but it definitely would have sheared his arms off."

"Fascinating!" Professor Colbert replied, spending several moments looking Tails over as he patiently hovered in place. "If you don't mind, I'd like to research that a bit more, if you have some free time later."

"Sure," Tails replied with a shrug. They continued up the stairs in relative silence, until the silence began to bother Tails. "Say, Professor, if you are interested in research that much, would you like to help me in building some things? There is some stuff from my world that I forgot to bring that would help, but I don't have the supplies. If you can perform alchemy like Mrs. Cheveruse can, it would be a big help. I also need a workspace."

"I would be delighted! What do you intend to build?" the bald man replied energetically.

Tails mulled things over a bit as the two climbed. "An upgrade for my shoes would be handy, I suppose. I have a close friend who had a pair of rocket boots that I analyzed back on my home world, and I think I can recreate it. Even though I can fly, it gets tiring, and rocket boots would help me reach higher speeds and stay airborne for longer."

"Of course, I would be delighted to assist! Flight is normally achieved via riding flying animals, such as dragons or griffons. I suppose it would be possible with Wind or levitation magic, although I've never heard of anyone who has tried. Personal flight would be a great achievement"

"Well, of course it has its limitations, based on how much fuel carried, weight, and aerodynamics, among other things. I would rather keep the project secret between you and me," Tails added. "Most people would probably kill themselves running into stuff, I bet."

The duo curtailed their scientific conversations as the top of the stairs came into sight, the heavy wooden door sealed shut once more. Professor Colbert stepped up and gave the door two hard, quick raps with his knuckles before opening the door. Inside, the Headmaster and his female secretary each sat at their respective desks. The headmaster was talking to a small mouse on his shoulder.

"-oho! Black, I see. Very nice, suits her we–" the headmaster muttered. Overhearing his out-loud thinking, the secretary lady crossed the distance between their desks at lightning speed and yanked the old man clear out of his chair by his ear. "Ahhh!" the old man cried, crawling back into his chair. "Mrs. Longueville, you mustn't do things like that to an old man like me!" he exclaimed, rubbing his ear."

"Osmond, sir, if you weren't the headmaster, I would have probably beaten the living Brimir out of you…" the secretary said in an annoyed tone, returning to her desk. "And you have guests, so I suggest you stop focusing on me."

"Ah, yes, Colbert and Miles, good to see you. What brings you here today? Do you have any news on Miles' rune?" Osmond said, stroking his now swollen red ear.

"Yes, I do," Colbert replied. "It took a while to identify, partially because it has never existed until today. I believe because of Saito's rune and being summoned at the same time, Miles too carries the powers of a Void mage's familiar. Translated rune for rune, it reads along the lines of "the Armor of God" as it would be pronounced in Germanian, Die Waffenrüstung Gottes. Given the name, I believe it has something to do with protection, although I have yet to identify how it operates."

"Very well, Colbert," Headmaster Osmond stated, stroking his grey beard. "Miles, would you have any idea as to how it might work? Sometimes a familiar, when given its runes, are also given an innate knowledge of how to use it."

"No sir," Tails stated. "I remember reading in a couple novels and comic books of powers that involve protection, usually by shields of various kinds. Sometimes it also involved invisibility or invulnerability."

"Very well. Miles, I would ask if you could spend some time with Professor Colbert this afternoon in an attempt to learn how to harness this power? It could take a while, but would benefit you greatly."

"That shouldn't be a problem. I had intended to do some research with Professor Colbert anyhow, so this coincides perfectly as it is."

"Very well, I'll leave you two to it. Also, please no more jumping out of my window. I don't approve of people other than my faculty entering this office without permission. However, I will let it slide this once, because you didn't know the rules, and, in all honesty, it was quite interesting to watch."

Rubbing the back of his head in embarrassment, Tails looked down at the ground and laughed. "Heheh, sorry about that. I'll keep in mind for the future."


	5. Season 1 Chapter 5

Season 1 Chapter 5:

Tails began his journey down the massive stairwell of the Headmaster's office. "Well, that went better than expected," he thought. "I thought they were gonna say 'Death penalty for you!' for breaking those bullies' shoulders and skulls. Then again, they did deserve it for trying to force themselves on Kirche like that…"

Eventually, the fox reached the bottom of the stairs, his stomach rumbling from the day's events. "it's getting late, I oughta go grab some chow before I go the night without dinner. I wish these people knew how to make a chilidog and a mint-chocolate milkshake. That'd be the life."

"Tails! Over here! Come on, it's time for dinner!" a voice called out Tails looked down the hall to see Kirche standing patiently, motioning for him to come over. He began to jog over, but slowed to a stop as Louise stormed up to Kirche's side, pointing and yelling.

"-heard me!" Louise stated, staring at the red-haired girl. "I said he just as much MY familiar as he is yours, and I don't want him in the hall! It's disrespectful to us nobles. He should wait outside like the rest of them!"

"But he's my familiar too! I want him inside so I can spend quality time with him, unlike how you abuse Saito," Kirche replied accusatively.

"It's MY night with him, so it's MY rules! He stays outside. You heard that, Miles?!" she added, turning on Tails now. "Yeah, I got it," he replied, rolling his eyes in frustration. "I'll just be wandering the grounds. I'll come find you when I see people leave the dining hall."

Kirche gave Tails a brief shrug before chasing off after Louise, who had already bolted for the dining hall. "Great, so now I don't get dinner either way. Thank you for your wonderful, exemplary leadership as a master, Louise. Remind me not to do you any favors," he thought to himself before heading off outside.

Out in the lush lawn area, the low-hanging sun cast a shadow from the outer perimeter wall all the way to the base of the central tower. "Dang, I wish I had something to eat," Tails thought. "Last ate… back home. Wish I had a couple of those red and white cellophane-wrapped mints from Chris' world. Those were good."

Distracted in his own thoughts, Tails couldn't hear as two missiles sailed through the air, whacking him in the back of the head. "Ow! What the hell?" he cried aloud, rubbing the back of his head.

"Hey, Fox boy!" a voice called out. "Don't think we haven't forgotten what you did to us! We'll get you back for it!"

Tails looked around, finding the two bullies from earlier standing on the far end of the field, their heads and shoulders thoroughly coated in bandages excluding their eyes and mouth. He could see as the blond-haired boy flicked the wand he was holding at waist-level, causing some rocks to levitate out of his pocket. Without warning, the rocks hurtle toward Tails' head again, this time at a much higher speed. He raised his arms to block his face, hoping to take the worst of the blow, waiting expectantly for the rocks to impact.

However, they hadn't. The two rocks impacted the ground with a muffled thud, causing Tails to look up in confusion. A blue wall of energy shimmered inches in front of him, through which he could see the two bullies standing agape. Before Tails could process what had happened, the blond-haired boy regained his wits, tugging at his friend's shirt edge. "He's armed! Let's go, Geoffrey. Don't think we've forgotten, fox boy!" he called, turning to run awkwardly with his hands motionless at his side, unable to move his encased shoulders too well by his bandages. Tails chuckled at the awkward sight, watching as the two boys disappeared around the corner.

"Now, how did you get here?" he muttered to himself, looking over the blue, translucent energy-shield. "Sorta like the energy shield projector I built on the Blue Typhoon, just… the wrong color. That's all. Odd. I wonder…"

The fox peeled off his left-hand glove, brushing the fur aside to get a look at the odd tattoo he had seen earlier. It was glowing brightly now, gently pulsing with a pale light. Suddenly, the rune's light faded and blinked out of existence, leaving behind the dull brown foreign words that had been there before. Tails looked up to see that the shield had also faded away, leaving only empty space in front of him. "Now THAT's cool!" he thought to himself. "Mr. Colbert might want to know about that. Anyways, back to food."

Stomach growling constantly now, Tails hiked around the Academy grounds until he found a massive group of creatures of all sorts waiting by the wall of an outlying building. Nestled against the wall, he could see the Japanese boy he had seen earlier sitting in the grass with a bowl in his lap and another at his side. The boy looked up from his meal for a moment to make eye contact with Tails, prompting him to come sit beside him by pointing at the spare bowl and smiling. Grateful, Tails trotted over to the boy's side and took a seat, picking his bowl out of the grass and giving him a nod in thanks.

"So what's your name? I saw you in that infirmary room earlier and thought I'd save you a bowl since it was going fast," the boy asked quietly, eyeing a purple, one-eyed creature that floated past.

"Thanks! My name's Miles, although most people just call me Tails like my friends do. For obvious reasons, I suppose," Tails replied, wrapping his twin tails around his stomach for comfort. "And yours?"

"Saito. Is it just me, or do these things creep you out?" the boy asked, nodding toward the motley crew of creatures waiting patiently in the field. "I mean, ALL of this is pretty weird. Magic was just something from the comic books, where I come from."

Tails shrugged indifferently. "It's a bit weird to see this many different non-humanoid animals, yeah, but it's not unheard of where I come from. Mobians come in all shapes and sizes. That blue dragon over there doesn't look too far off from Dulcy, in a sense."

Saito looked at Tails with confusion, but decided to withhold his questions. The two sat and ate in silence until they finished, waiting until students began to stream out of the several hallways headed to the dorms.

"Oh, hey, here comes Louise," Saito said, setting his bowl in the grass. "Probably she's come to drag me off somewhere, knowing my luck."

The pink-haired girl strode over the two and snapped her fingers to catch their attention. "Both of you, come on! It's time for bed and you two need to get set up."

Tails set his bowl in the grass by Saito's and stood up, dusting off his rear before chasing after Louise, who had already started off toward her dorm. He and Saito quickly caught up behind her as she entered her dorm tower, beginning the ascent up the several flights of stairs to her room.

"This will be a first for you two, so I'll be setting some ground rules," Louise stated without looking over her shoulder to the two boys. "First off, there'll be no snoring, talking in your sleep, or other obnoxious noises. If I find you doing this, then you'll be sleeping in the hallway. Secondly, no getting up in the night to go to the toilet. I can't afford to lose sleep over your personal habits. Thirdly, ignoring my orders will result in immediate punishment. You're my familiars, so you do as I say. Understand?"

"So we're essentially slaves?" Saito asked.

"Familiars, not slaves," Louise replied. "Slaves are mostly outlawed around the entirety of Halkeginia, excluding prisoners of war. Familiars are summoned, and only wizards can have them. We only get one, in theory, so there's generally more emotional attachment to Familars. With exceptions."

"I'm guessing we're the exception?" Saito muttered to himself as the three reached the floor Louise's room was on. She stopped short of the top of the stairs and turned on the two boys, sparks of anger in her eyes. "What was that, you insolent dog?"

Tails casually pointed a thumb at Saito, directing her anger at him. "Don't you DARE talk bad about your master! Truth or not, you will give me respect at all times, understood?!" she yelled.

Without giving him a chance to respond, Louise stormed down the hall, leaving the two boys at the end of the stairs. She yanked open her door and angrily gestured toward the room. "Get in, before I blow you back down the stairs."

Tails rushed for the door, beating Saito inside by less than a second. While Tails stopped short by the door, Saito kept going, throwing himself onto the bed at the far end of the room. "Finally, something half decent!" he exclaimed, stretching out over the soft bed.

"Uhh, bad idea," Tails said, but it was too late. Louise silently strode over to a dresser and pulled open the top drawer, removing a short brown riding crop. "Do you REALLY think that bed is for you, you useless dog?!" she yelled, pointing the crop at him. "Get up."  
Saito sat up from where he lay on the bed, only to receive a solid whack over the back of the head that sent him sprawling to the floor. "What the hell?!" he yelled back, jumping to his feet. "What was that for?"

"You two sleep there," she stated, pointing toward two piles of hay on the floor by the wall not too far from the bed. "Any more stupid mistakes like that and you'll be sleeping outside. Got it?" the boy nodded miserably and crawled over to one of the hay piles to lay down. Tails joined him, stretching out over the rough material that pricked at his skin in places. "Damn, we don't even get proper beds?" Tails could hear Saito mutter to himself. "What's with this girl… Not even any pillows."

Seemingly, Louise failed to hear this remark as she changed clothes for bed and went around shutting off the several lamps throughout the room. When the room was silent and Louise was sound asleep, Tails tapped Saito on the shoulder. "Hey, if you ask me, it looks like the Industrial Revolution hasn't even taken place yet. Pillows are probably pretty expensive." He wrapped one of his tails around under his own head and offered the other to Saito.

"Thanks," he said, sliding down a bit to get it under his head. "Won't this give you numb tails though?

"Nah, there's enough fur there to keep the veins from being clamped shut," Tails replied. "Just don't do anything weird like drool, bite, or clamp it between your legs. I'm not a body pillow."

Saito nodded and went back to staring at the ceiling. A few minutes passed in dark silence, so Tails decided to get to sleep, assuming the conversation done. However, just as he was just about to slip off into sleep, Saito nudged him back.  
"Hey Tails, do you think we can ever get back to our worlds?" he asked.

Tails took a moment to ponder the question, his eyes scanning the darkness in front of him. "Well, I've traveled between universes before, so it's not unheard of that we could return. However, every time it's been under very specific conditions, so who knows if we'll ever find a way. For example, my world was a separate dimension from a variation of Earth, which split into two dimensions after a universal event, triggered by a massive asteroid strike. One side of the dimensional 'coin', Earth, developed as a human-dominated planet, where Mobians such as myself went extinct and humans continued to develop technology as you know it. My world, Mobius, balanced the Mobian and human populations at about seven to three, and developed technology at a slower rate, with some exceptions. We traveled between dimensions twice with the power of these things we call Chaos Emeralds, and twice a friend of mine traveled by wormhole, once manufactured and once natural. Both were mostly flukes, though."

"Really?" Saito whispered, rustling around on his hay pile. "So if we had these 'Chaos Emeralds' as you say, we could make our way back to our worlds? How would we get them?"

"That's the problem. There are only one set of them, back home on my planet. Besides, we would need all 7 of them, and it's usually a pain to find them because every time they enter a new world or get used together for any purpose, they scatter. Every universe has its own equivalent source of power, so my guess would be it would have to do with magic, since that seems to be unique to this universe. We have manufactured fake chaos emeralds before, but only with the help of real ones, and they wouldn't have the power for inter-dimensional travel."

"Oh. So we have to find someone with a spell to jump dimensions?"

Tails nodded. "Essentially, yeah. There will most likely be natural means such as wormholes, but there's no telling as to when, where, and how to use it to our advantage. We wouldn't even know if the output destination is correct. Wormholes can lead anywhere, and could drop us in an even more hostile environment. I wouldn't worry about it too much. We're safe here, and methods will surface. When one thing travels to another dimension, it creates an imbalance that the universe attempts to correct. When my friends and I were sent to Earth by the Emeralds, we stayed for so long that the "coin" became thin enough that the worlds almost collided, causing massive wormholes. If the same event occurs, we'll know about it for sure, and use it to get home."

In the background, Louise rustled around in her bed, but neither of the two boys paid her any attention. "Alright, I think I get it," Saito said, his voice rising a little. "So we'll basically cause the apocalypse to happen, slip out during the commotion, and everything will go back to normal."

Tails forced a cough to contain his laughter at the thought. "Yeah, pretty much. Never thought about it that way."

Finally, the bed exploded in a flurry of movement as Louise sat up, pillows that were stacked on top of her head flying everywhere. "WILL YOU TWO SHUT UP! I'm trying to sleep! If you are going to talk, I will throw you both outside and you can sleep in the hall. Now pick up my pillows you caused me to lose."

"Sorry," Tails said, removing his tail from under Saito's head to stand up. He walked around to pick up the several pillows that had fallen off of the bed, tossing them in Louise's direction. When she was satisfied, he went back to his hay pile and laid back down, giving a tail back to Saito before shutting his eyes. "Even if what I said was factual, I always get the feeling like I'm lying to myself. I hope Sonic remembered to swing by my house and managed to find that note…" he thought before drifting off into sleep.


	6. Season 1 Chapter 6

Season 1 Chapter 6

After a refreshing sleep, Tails woke to a bright room and the fresh smell of… musty room. Saito was laying on his stomach, face down on his tail that Tails offered him the night before. Louise was starting to rustle in bed, probably because the curtain was open and light was shining on her. After the gentle work of prying his tail out from under Saito's head without waking him, he silently crept over to the curtain and tugged it shut. "I figure Louise is always so cranky because she doesn't get good sleep, with windows open like this. Hopefully she won't be so bad if I let her sleep in," Tails thought. He silently strolled to the door, picking up his shoes as he went. "Gotta love fur. Definitely couldn't do that without padded feet." He stopped to put on his shoes, then continued down to a building out in the courtyard where he'd seen Mr. Colbert earlier. "They aren't serving breakfast yet, so perhaps I should see if Mr. Colbert is around." Tails knocked on the unlatched door, pushing it in a ways.. "Come in!" he heard a voice call, slightly muffled.

He gave the door a slight push and walked in, only to be repulsed by a foul-smelling odorous cloud. A white-masked Colbert walked out and removed a white cotton mask soaked in water to speak. "Terribly sorry about that, Miles," he stated, waving his hand in front of his nose to get some fresh air. "Another experiment gone wrong. It has a bad habit of creating that odor as a byproduct, requiring a cloth mask like this one. I've been experimenting with some new chemicals, and have yet to find a safe protection device for them."

"It's ok, Professor Colbert," Tails replied. "How long have you been in there? I can't imagine a mask like that would hold up too well to pure gaseous ammonia. Nasty stuff."

"Oh, so you have a name for this gas? What do you know about it?" Colbert asked, surprised.

"It's a horrible-smelling basic compound that evaporates at room temperature into a gas. Back on my world, we use it in a liquid solution as a solvent to clean things such as glass, because it evaporates cleanly with no residue," Tails explained. "In its gaseous form, it was also historically used to wake someone from a deep sleep or unconsciousness by shocking the brain by its smell. Coincidentally, those who had it used on them had very little nose hair, as a result."

"Very interesting... One moment, let me open the windows for this 'ammonia' to clear out, then we can go inside and talk further." Professor Colbert donned his mask and returned into the workshop, followed by the clacking of window locks being operated. After about five minutes of what sounded like frantic cleaning, Professor Colbert reappeared in the doorway and gestured Tails to enter. Stepping inside, the fox looked around in wonder at the variety of diagrams mounted on the walls and the mass of beakers, flasks, burner stands, and other apparatus covering the workbenches. Unbeknownst to Tails, Colbert was closely observing him. Tails bounced from one object to the next with wide-eyed energy, obsessing over every small detail.

"Wow, you have a water distillation unit! And tons of burners! But where's the gas supply? And how do you adjust the flame height and temperature? What's with this pentagram document over here?" Tails spewed as he paused to look over every small device.

"I'm surprised you identified so many of these!" Colbert replied enthusiastically. "As for the burners, they are enchanted and require no fuel supply. The document is a note on my research of the different magics." Colbert eagerly replied.

"No fuel?! Where does magic get its energy source from, then? No matter what universe, you can't just break natural laws, and Conservation of Energy is a big one. Even the Chaos Emeralds have their power limits."

"That's part of my research. I find it so odd that we've found how to use magic, without any concept or understanding as to where it comes from. I suppose it's like using pigments for clothing, without knowing what makes them colorful. Anyways, have you discovered anything about your runes so far?"

Tails nodded "Yeah. It's some sort of energy field that reflects objects. Stuff of fiction novels back on my world. I think it's controlled by thoughts, because it blinked on instantly when I was protecting myself from flying rocks, and blinked off when I thought about turning it off."

"Very Interesting. We will have to test more, as it could be linked to more than just thoughts and instincts. Anyways, was there something else you needed?"

"Hmm… yeah. Are there any workspaces I could use for my own projects while I'm here on this world?"

"You are always welcome to use this space, if it is suitable," Professor Colbert said. "I am teaching during the day and often doing paper or lab work here during the evenings. This was an unusual visit, because I had to collect some supplies for the morning class. The test was me simply being distracted."

Tails nodded. "Great, thank you! I'll probably clear a space over on that spot by the back wall to begin work on that rocket shoes upgrade I told you about last night. I'll also most likely be here during the afternoons and evenings, if I can get away from those girls."

"If you don't mind, I would like to watch you build this device," Professor Colbert stated, looking around the small workshop. "I've always had a fascination for technology, and we've had a few small odds and ends show up from other worlds previously, although I've seen very few of them personally. Anyhow, I should be headed out to set up for this year's new class. I'll trust you will be safe by yourself here."

"I will. Thanks for your help!"

With that, Professor Colbert gathered a small satchel of supplies from a nearby bench and left. As soon as he was out of earshot, Tails leaped from the stool he'd been sitting on, and started clearing a space on the back wall. He'd need plenty of space to clear for the entryway he planned to build. He looked around for something to cut wood with, and found a small hand saw. After about ten minutes of Power Ring-assisted sawing, there was a new man-sized square hole in the floor in the corner, revealing fresh dirt below. He started clearing a space to dig, but realized there wasn't anything to dig with in the workshop.

Tails bolted out of the workshop, off to the kitchen where he saw Saito last night. A waiter had just stepped outside to go set up the morning banquet, but Tails managed to catch him. "Do you know where there might be a gardening shed? I need a shovel," he asked.

"Sure! Just around the corner on the other side of the building here, there's a shed with some supplies." The waiter replied.

"Thanks!" Tails called as he took off running. He darted around the corner of the building to a small shed right where the waiter said it was, where he found all the tools he needed. After gathering everything, he walked back to the workshop and began digging.

* * *

 

Two hours later, he had cleared a small straight-down tunnel about twenty-three feet deep, connected to a twenty-foot-wide, forty-foot-long and twenty-foot-high space, dropping the removed dirt outside the wall. "Now I need Professor Colbert to supply some metals for me with his alchemy, and I'll have all the materials I need for a functional underground base. Would have been much easier with power tools, but all I have is a plasma cutter function built in to my T-Buster." Tails thought. He was envisioning everything he'd have down in his new base, such as ventilation, robot-assisted workspaces, and maybe even homemade power tools! He climbed his way back up the packed-earth ladder he'd made, then covered the hole with the planks he'd cut to hide the entrance. No sooner after he walked out was he immediately ambushed by Kirche with Tabitha, Louise and Saito in tow.

"Tails, where have you been? I was looking all over for you after morning classes. Were you hiding out in that shed over there?" the red-haired girl asked.

"No, I wasn't intentionally hiding in the workshop, I was working," Tails explained. "Mostly clearing space through Mr. Colbert's workspace for my own projects. He said I could use his workshop for my own projects in the future."

"Oh, cool! I'll have to drop in sometime and take a look. Anyways, it's training time right now. The competition is coming up, and we need to work on a routine for you."

"Competition? Routine? What are you talking about?"

Louise butted in, annoyed with Tails' ignorance. "The Princess is coming to view the annual Display, where everyone has their familiars perform to their ability. You'd best not screw this up."

"She's right," Kirche added. "The guidelines only involve not harming viewers unless they volunteer, so it's up to us as to decide what you do. We just have to make sure it's special, because everything so far has been pretty crazy."

"Agreed," Tabitha said.

"Alright. Well, whatcha got planned?" Tails asked.

"I was thinking we could have you and Saito spar onstage," Kirche offered. "While you were working, Saito got in a fight with a guy named Guiche and turned out to be a pretty strong swordsman. Might be interesting."

"Well, alright," the Mobian said with a shrug. "It's not ideal, 'cuz I don't like fighting if I can avoid it, but if it helps Saito, I'm down for it."

"Awesome! Well, today's the day for practice, so you guys should get on it. I've got classwork to deal with, so I'll leave it to you guys to get ready. We've got two hours until lunch, so get to it," Kirche said. "Also, Flame might practice with you guys, so don't be disturbed if he walks up and wants to play."

"And don't hurt Saito like you did those boys. If you do, you get to pay the medical bills," Louise added.

"Of course. Tabitha, are you going with them?" Tails asked.

Tabitha shook her head. She put her fingers up to her mouth and gave a sharp whistle. Moments later, a large shadow streaked across the ground, coming to a stop a few yards away. With a blast of rushing wind, a large blue dragon touched down beside them, letting out a yawn that reverberated through the air like a dull roar. "Training," Tabitha said.

"...Alright," Tails replied with a shrug, looking up at the massive beast that stood in front of him, sitting on its' haunches. "Let's go outside of the walls, where we won't disturb anyone," Tails said. "Also, where can we get some weapons to train with? I have my own, but it doesn't look like Saito does."

Tabitha then raised her staff and began chanting. After a few seconds, the moisture in the air condensed into two sharp sticks of ice, then reshaped into swords. Both Tails and Saito were dumbstruck.

"Wow, Tabitha, that's cool!" Tails exclaimed, gingerly taking his sword by the handle. "Condensing atmospheric moisture into ice, pretty awesome! Anyways, let's get started before these melt."


	7. Season 1 Chapter 7

Season 1 Chapter 7

After an hour of practice, Tails called a break for some rest. Saito was completely bent over, attempting to catch his breath. Tails, however, stood relatively calmly, wiping off a line of sweat from near his eyes.

"Sorry if I went a little hard on you there. I'm used to fighting with ranged weaponry, so it's been a bit since I've had to do hand-to-hand combat. We can get back to practice whenever you are ready." Tails said.

"No, I'll need a little bit of time," Saito replied, raising a hand in defeat. "Where did you learn all of that? I can't imagine you having to fight like that for some reason... I guess you just don't look the part."

"Yeah, well, long story. Not your epic, rules-of-combat cartoon fights, for sure."

"Hey, we've got all the time we need. Why not spill? I'd like to rest a little more, anyways."

"Alright, fine. I'm still gonna keep it pretty condensed, it's REALLY long. Might as well take a seat," Tails said, walking over to the wall where Tabitha sat, still contently reading her book.

"Alright, where to start…" he whispered to himself as he took a seat, waiting for Saito to join him. After a moment's thought, he closed his eyes and began.

"Ah, I know. It started when I was REALLY young. I was born into a nice family in a city called Mobotropolis. Mom was a member of the King's Council, and Dad was a general in the army, second in line for command behind a guy named Kintobor. On the day I was born, this guy Ivo Kintobor started a coup against the King. My parents sent me into hiding along with some others, where I was raised by princess Sally and a group of resistance fighters who hid out in Knothole, our base out in the woods. Kintobor, having changed his name to Robotnik, used a device called a roboticizer on everyone. It was a tool that was originally built for surgical purposes, replacing flesh-and-bone organs with uniquely tailored mechanical counterparts. However, he used it to build a robotic army out of innocent civilians to execute the coup."

"Fast forward a couple years. I was about 8 at this point," Tails continued, making a circular motion with his hand. "I was working as a machinist alongside another inventor for the Resistance, until we were able to design a device that reverses the roboticizer's effects. After the tests proved successful with Uncle Chuck, we managed to find and use some ancient prophetic weapons to defeat Robotnik. From there, we de-roboticized the entire city and were able to save my Dad and Mom, who actually had been teleported off of Mobius by an alien race of all things. Mobius is the name of the whole planet, by the way. Fast forward a bit more, this other scientist, Dr. Eggman pops up with more world-domination plans. The King was always intent on trying to negotiate with him, trying to avoid war. My Dad didn't like that, so he started and led a civil war, but got captured. Me and my mom freed him, so he then walks right up to the King and starts a duel. Princess Sally intervened, and with a bit of negotiating, Dad went back to being the new General of the Army, while my friends and I went back to fighting Eggman. Next, me and the remaining Freedom Fighters from before get in a scuffle at Eggman's base, because he has the Chaos Emeralds, and something goes wrong. We get sent to Chris' world, a variation of Earth that's pretty modern, like yours. Pass another year duking it out with Eggman on Earth, and we finally get back to my world through use of the Chaos Emeralds. Pretty much as soon as we get back home, a group called the Metarex show up on a genocide mission to kill everyone of this plant-based species called the Seedrians. Conveniently, the last of the species crash-lands by my house, an alien girl named Cosmo." At the mention of her name, Tails paused for a moment to collect himself and take a breath. "I refit a warship I had built to go into space and destroy them all to save Cosmo, but... yeah, it worked and we won. Fast forward a few more months, I'm in my hangar doing some work on one of my space jets, and a green orb shows up out of nowhere. I touch it, and boom, here I am. There were a few extra things, but they were relatively insignificant in terms of who I am today."

At some point in his monologue, even Tabitha had put down her book to listen. Saito continued to sit in silent awe, until he realized that that as the end of the story. "Wow, that's intense," he remarked, running his hands through his hair. "What happened to everyone after Cosmo? What happened to your spaceship?"

"Everyone went back to attempting to live their own 'normal' lives," Tails replied with a shrug. "I'd assume Sonic is still joking around with Princess Sally, Rotor's still building stuff in his workshop, Eggman's finding some new way to dominate the world, Mom and Dad are at work, and Shadow's still dealing with himself in whatever way possible. He's always been a rather touchy guy. As to the spaceship, everything is still there and rebuilt from the fighting. Maybe I'll show you guys someday, if we ever figure out how to go back."

"That'd be awesome! Yeah, my life isn't very special. I get average grades, live in an average house, and do average stuff, like making model planes."

Tails' ears twitched. "Really? That's cool. I used to love modeling, until I found myself absorbed in building and tending for full-sized planes. There's something so… fun about making model-sized ones, probably because they seem so pristine, so perfect."

"You build planes?! That's crazy," Saito remarked.

"Well, I mean... they're easier than space ships, I suppose," Tails said, groaning in the back of his mind that Saito had already forgotten parts of the story. "My first plane wasn't my own, actually, it was Sonic's, and I still have no clue as to how he got it. It's been ages since I've seen him fly it. He gave it to me when I was young, after I got so absorbed with it that I gave it a paint job and tune-up without realizing it wasn't mine. Heh. Good times… Anyways, we should get back to practicing. Tabitha, would you care to make us some more swords? These ones are pretty chipped up," he added, holding the sword-shaped icicle at arm's length. The afternoon sunlight bounced around inside the cracked prism-shaped crystal, casting rainbows all around him. His hand was starting to get cold from holding the slippery ice, despite his thick synthetic gloves he wore.

Tabitha nodded and waved her wand, using her magic to sharpen up the old blades by reshaping them once more. Without warning, she stood up and let out a shrill whistle that rang out across the field. Out of the trees in the distance, her blue-and-white-scaled dragon rose into the air and rapidly approached, coming to an abrupt stop in front of the three. She promptly mounted the creature and tapped the side of its throat with her hand, spurring the dragon to launch into the air and begin to make its' way across the compound.

"I wonder if I said something she didn't like?" Tails thought aloud as he watched the dragon fly.

Saito shook his head. "Nah, she's always off doing her own thing as I understand it," Saito replied. "I overheard Kirche talking about her. I wouldn't worry about her, she's probably fine," Saito said.

Pushing off the ground with his twin tails, Tails helped Saito up to his feet and stepped out into the field. The two boys returned to their sparring routine, involving bouts of two-handed, dominant-single handed, and off-handed practice. Not an hour had passed before Kirche and Louise had finally come out to watch the display. They were both amazed at what they saw.

"Wow! I don't know how Saito did it earlier, but Tails is really getting to him!" Kirche commented, watching as the black-haired Japanese boy weaved his way through Tails' flurry of strikes, saving his energy by blocking with his own blade only where necessary.

"Hey, don't you disrespect my familiar! He's just as strong in every way as Tails, just you watch. Come on, Saito!" Louise called out.

Saito finally started to gain an upper edge for a moment, catching Tails unawares for a quick jab in the stomach. Tails instinctively tried to parry the blow, but couldn't bring his sword down in time, and moved both arms in to clamp the blade. Suddenly, with a small flash of light, the same blue energy shield from earlier flashed back into existence, breaking the ice blade into hundreds of small fragments from the force of Saito's lunge. Tails quickly capitalized on the turn of events, charging Saito with an arm outstretched that caught him under the neck, bringing him quickly to the ground. "Game, set and match!" Tails called as he hopped up off the boy, tossing his icy blade aside.

"How did you do that?" Saito asked, watching the shield inquisitively as it hovered in front of Tails' arm.

"It's my runes, I suppose," Tails said with a shrug. "I'm not quite sure how to activate it, but I think it has to do with instincts and thought. When I saw you lunge at me, I attempted to clamp the blade between my arms to keep it away from me, but the shield popped up automatically and broke it."

"Crazy. Wish I had something like that, but I'm still not quite sure what my runes do," Saito replied, shaking his head.

"Well, if anything, I'd be willing to bet money on that fight you had earlier. If you really held your own against a magic-using student, I sure wouldn't have guessed it from how you fight now," Tails remarked. "No offense," he quickly apologized.

"Maybe. Well, since we don't have any more swords, let's just call it a day. I'm beat. What do we have next? Do we just go back to doing nothing?"

Tails looked over to Louise and Kirche for confirmation, only to find them walking back into the depths of the Academy's central tower. "Maybe. I have to get back to work for Professor Colbert. I'm sure he's waiting for me at the workshop. Thanks for the practice," he replied. Turning back to the stone tower, Tails took off for the kitchen, his stomach growling after training without breakfast. When he arrived, he gently pulled open the door, so as to not alert anyone. "I'm not sure if they are anywhere close to serving lunch, so I may need to 'borrow' something..." he thought. When he was satisfied with that no one was inside, he walked silently into the kitchen, looking around in every room. Suddenly, a large hand landed on Tails' shoulder. He snapped around, ready to face the new attacker who appeared to be a burly brown-haired mountain of a man in a white cooking outfit, complete with a spotless apron and chef's toque.

"So there you are, Warrior! I've been looking forward to meeting you," the man said. "We've heard about your feats in combat, the way you defeated the two stuck-up noble brats. You and Sword are very brave!"

"Excuse me? Sword? Warrior? Who are you talking about?" Tails replied, still a little jumpy from the sudden scare.

"You and Saito of course! We couldn't name you both Warrior, so since swordplay was Saito's specialty, that's what we've named him. We are very grateful for how you've defied the Nobility, far better than we commoners can. It's inspirational! Come, you must be hungry. I was just preparing the lunch banquet, you can help me taste test."

"I didn't mean it like that, but… Thanks, I guess." Tails replied. "A word of warning, I forgot to eat breakfast and we've been training all day, so I'll eat whatever you hand me. Take my recommendations with a grain of salt."

"A true warrior has an appetite for all things! You demonstrate that pretty well," The man said, smirking. He motioned Tails over to a table near a magic-fueled stove top, where three pots were busy steaming away over a low flame, filling the room with indescribably wonderful aromas. Two of the three pots had an additional plate of a meat and vegetable alongside them, indicating what should be served with what. Tails took a seat where the man indicated, taking a moment to unfold a cloth napkin and set it in his lap as the chef doled out a small serving of each meal and its' accompanying stew.

Taking a bite of each one in succession, Tails began to pick up the pace as his stomach urged him to, making short work of each plate. "These are all great! I prefer this one the most, it has a bit of a comfort-food feel to it," Tails said, pointing with his fork toward the remains of a pasta-based dish.

The man nodded. "Good call! That one is a pasta with a tomato, cream, and alcohol reduction sauce called 'Penne al Vodka' by people in the southern country of Romalia. It's a comfort food that works well both in the summer and the winter, if you adjust the amount of cream and alcohol."

"Oh! Since the theme is alcohol, what about matching desserts? I'd say suggest rum balls for dessert, as a winter dish. Summer dishes probably need a lighter flavor, so perhaps a mint milkshake?" Tails stated with a satisfied sigh, remembering the cool flavor of his favorite sweet drink.

"Say, not a bad idea! Normally we save desserts for dinner, but I suppose a little change here and there wouldn't hurt! I don't know what a milkshake is, though..." the man said, lifting his white chef's toque to run his massive hand through his hazel-brown hair.

"Oh man, you guys have been missing out on LIFE!" Tails said with a laugh. "A milkshake is a delicious, thick drink made of various flavors of ice cream, milk, and toppings to preference. My favorite is mint-flavored ice cream, with bits of brownies in it. Brownies are a kind of very dense chocolate cake, if you're wondering. I have to get them specially made with a cocoa substitute though, since normal chocolate makes me pretty sick. Part of being a canine-based Mobian, unfortunately."

"Mhmm... sounds fantastic!" the man replied. "I'll have to give it a try sometime. Perhaps you would like to come help out sometime? You seem well-versed in cooking."

Tails nodded. "Perhaps, if I'm not too busy. I should be off to find my friends, I'm sure they are wondering where I am. Thanks again for the food! I hope the students enjoy it as much as I did." He launched himself out of the chair and bolted for the door, leaving the chef to his preparation work. He took off for the workshop, where he knew Professor Colbert would be since students were streaming from various parts of campus toward the dining hall. "That means Mister Colbert would be at the workshop during lunch break," he thought. Sure enough, when Tails blasted into the workshop, Professor Colbert was over by the back left corner, working away on a chemical solution over a burner. Despite the noise, he turned to face Tails with a face as calm as a bronze statue.

"Tails, I appreciate your enthusiasm for being on time, but please don't attempt to scare me or disrupt my work," Colbert stated, matter-of-factly.

"Really sorry, Professor," Tails replied with an apologetic tone. "I was just feeling good and got a little overly-energetic. I'm ready to work on the rocket shoes when you are." Tails replied. "Also, I have another favor to ask."

"Of course. What do you need?"

Tails walked over and began to lift the boards to his room below. "Down here, if you don't mind. I felt that I shouldn't attempt to take over your workspace, so I dug my own underground space." The two clambered down into the dark room, which Colbert promptly illuminated with a magic flame.

"Well, I guess foxes do have a tendency to make holes and dens…" Professor Colbert remarked, looking around in the darkened space. "What did you want me to do with this?"

"I'd like to use your Alchemy to coat the walls with metal, preferably steel since it won't rust. Aluminum would work too, I suppose. I'll start manufacturing my own tools for creative purposes once I get the chance"

Professor Colbert nodded and took another look around, estimating the dimensions of the room. "Very well. This might take a moment, since it's such a large space." The bald professor began to chant a short spell, quietly mumbling to himself as the magic flame that sprouted from the tip of his wooden staff grew brighter. Concluding his chanting, he gently waved his staff around the room. A blinding flash suddenly filled the room as the floor gave way below them, falling only a foot or so. When they were able to see again, everything was coated in thick plate metal, smooth as can be. Even the simple ladder made of footholds in the packed dirt had become plated in steel, making it much sturdier and easier to use. "Is this suitable?" Professor Colbert asked.

Tails nodded enthusiastically. "Thanks Professor, this will work great! We can get started on the boots now. There are couple things I'll have to show you, but otherwise we should be able to start working right away."


	8. Season 1 Chapter 8

Season 1 Chapter 8

After many hours of exhausting work for Professor Colbert and Tails, they finally finished the first model of the jet boot upgrade, powered by two Power Rings generated by Tails' T-Buster mounted into the device in a small slot in the heel. It snapped nicely onto the outside of the fox's shoes, adding a second layer to the sole. With the press of a button on Tails' wristcomm, the jets sprung into life, carrying him off the ground by about a foot.

"Shall we take it for a spin, professor?" Tails asked, raising his voice to overcome the muted roar of the small turbines.

"Of course!" Professor Colbert replied, ecstatic that the device had even started. "There are still many things I've yet to fully comprehend, but I feel the technologies used here could have many other uses. It's best we make sure they work, first."

Tails shut off the jets with another tap of his wristcomm, following the professor outside into the clear evening light. Stepping a few paces away from the professor, he broke into a sprint toward the central tower, wristcomm at the ready. He activated the turbines as he ran, switching from a sprint into a skating motion as he built up speed like he'd seen Shadow do before. As he approached the base of the tower, he gave his tails a quick twist and began to accelerate even further, crouching down in preparation to jump. Moments before impacting the wall, he launched himself into the air and began to accelerate up the tower wall, using his tails in a push-propeller configuration to speed his way up the tower.

"Man, this feels great! Just like old times in Green Hill," the fox thought as he approached the top of the tower. "Let's get some real juice going." He brought up his T-Buster and took a fresh Power Ring out of the storage slot, activating it when he got the chance. With new energy surging through him, he launched himself off the tip of the tower as if it were a half-pipe, yelling with delight.

* * *

 

On the ground, Professor Colbert watched as the yellow blur sped up the tower, launching clear into the air toward the top. Over the muffled whine of the engines and the whirring sound of the Mobian's tails, he could make out Tails yelling something indistinct. All over campus, students looked up to watch the yellow blur with awe, rushing over to the workshop to get a closer look. "My Bremir, it's amazing! To think that such technology is capable of these amazing feats. He truly is a genius." Professor Colbert thought.

Tails began his rapid descent, skating back down the wall of the tower. Toward the bottom, he re-directed his feet toward the ground with the rockets on full throttle, while running his tails in reverse tilt to slow himself. He came to a jet-induced hover just above the ground, taking a moment to catch his breath. The turbines snapped off with a sudden pop as he tapped the corresponding button on his wristcomm, dropping him to the soft grass below. "Well, they work out great! Now I'd like to redesign the shoes to make it an integral system to the shoes. An external unit is a little bulky for my preferences," he called out, making his way over to the waiting professor.

A small congregation of students trickled over to ask questions, but were swiftly turned away by Professor Colbert. "I feel it's too dangerous to share right now," he said to Tails in private. "It certainly has some offensive capabilities." The students, dismayed that they wouldn't get to try, returned to their dorms.

"I disregarded my evening classes, which is normally very rare for me, but I feel that today was well worth it," the man stated with a slight bow. "Thank you for your willingness to share these technologies with me, Miles. Perhaps we can work together some more at some time. However, I still have other projects I must tend to. Again, thank you!"

"Of course, Professor!" Tails replied. "If you ever need some help with your projects, I'll be more than happy to help. This wouldn't have been possible without your Alchemy, and your ability to sculpt the metal into the parts I needed. Thanks again!"

At this point, Kirche had finally made it out of the dorms to collect Tails as Professor Colbert retreated to his workshop. "So there you are, Tails! I was worried about you. Was that loud noise you?" she asked.

"Yeah, it was. Sorry if I disturbed you during your studies," he replied apologetically.

"No big deal, I wasn't able to get much work done anyhow. Anyways, it's time for dinner. Louise and Tabitha are already inside."

"Wait, won't Louise kick me back out for being a familiar?"

"It's my night tonight, so you can ignore her for the rest of the evening. Besides, she's not too nice to her familiars, is she?" Kirche said with a slight grin.

"Yeah, well, everyone has their own opinions. Just gotta roll with it I suppose." Tails replied

"Anyways, let's go before the best stuff is eaten!" Kirche then proceeded to latch on to Tails' arm and start walking toward the dining hall. Tails was pretty hungry, but definitely wasn't looking forward to facing the brunt of Louise's rage. "Kirche tries to play nice, but doesn't quite understand what Louise will undoubtedly do whether or not it's not her night…" he thought. When they entered the dining hall, everyone turned their heads to watch the duo, although Tails wasn't sure whether they were gawking over Kirche or in shock that she had brought Tails with her.

"KIRCHE! I thought I told you not to bring him in here!" Tails could hear Louise yell over the murmur of the crowd. He spotted the pink-haired girl standing up at the end of one of the tables where Kirche was headed.

"Calm down, Louise. It's my night, so I can do with him as I like. Besides, you've brought him in here before, so it's not as if you are exactly innocent yourself," Kirche responded, obviously annoyed.

"Gahh, fine. You're going to spoil him and then he'll never behave. Saito's been that way a lot. I'll never get it out of him now…"

"Hey, I'm not a pet!" Tails interjected, annoyed. "As far as I'm concerned, she isn't spoiling me, because, contrary to what your beliefs seem to be, I eat at a dinner table in my own house back home. I'm not some uncivilized Homo Erectus, as you seem to treat me."

"What's a Homo Er… whatever you call it?" Louise asked, still in a haughty tone. "Did you stumble over an insult? Childish."

"No, it's an early human species that were the first to use tools," he growled. "Look it up, if such reference material exists. If you think it's such a big deal, I'll go eat outside, because I sure as heck don't need to be around you." With that, Tails replied, then stormed out of the room.

"Great, now look what you did, Louise!" Kirche stated, resigned. "You can't even keep your own familiar happy, much less make any friends. Zero magic AND zero social skills."

"Well, he's yours for tonight, so good luck finding him. I have my own issues to deal with, namely Saito. Idiot," Louise said, waving Kirche off.

Kirche, now realizing that Tails might run off, took off out of the hall calling after the yellow fox. Like magic, Tails was nowhere to be found.


	9. Season 1 Chapter 9

Season 1 Chapter 9

Tails took off through the main gate to the Academy, using his new rocket shoes to propel himself across the grassy field to the treeline of the nearby forests surrounding the campus. "If they don't want me in their dining hall, I'll make a nice table to have my own candle-light dinner," he thought. "It's still sorta light out, so I should have plenty of time to get this set up before the sun goes down completely."

With a quick tap of a button on his wristcomm, he brought up his T-Buster and switched over to plasma-cutter mode, the bright yellow beam filling the air with a pale light. He walked over to a massive tree farther into the forest and took a quick practice swing before cleaving through it with a single swipe. With a soft hiss, the blade vaporized its' way through the wood faster than it could combust, leaving nothing but charred, smoldering fibers. A single, firm push, and the tree came crashing to the ground with an enormous thud, ready to begin carving into the general parts. He took one length of timber and began slicing it into four posts roughly three feet long, tapering one end of each post to a point. He then took the widest part of the trunk near the stump and sliced it into a single large disc about four feet in diameter, two inches thick. Four quick stabs around the edge of the disc cleared holes for the posts, the wood-sap still hissing from the heat.

"I wonder what I'll have for dinner tonight. Hopefully the cook will be done in the kitchen, so I can make something myself. Maybe they'll even have rabbit or quail I can cook up tonight," he thought as he worked. He took each of the four posts and jammed it into the holes, creating a tight pressure fit for each one. He then flipped the table up on its new legs to cut off the protruding spiked tips, leaving the surface of the table nearly flush. Returning to the remains of the fallen tree, he then constructed twelve new legs and three flat circles of wood, repeating the drilling process to create three basic stools, burned smooth by the fast cuts of the blade. "That should do it! I like this caramel color the laser gave it," he thought, running his gloved hand over the rough table surface. "A bit of sandpaper will clean it right up. Heck, I might have to build one of these when I get home. Now all I need are tablecloths, cushions, candles, food, silverware, and the stars!"

After admiring his work for a moment, Tails opened the storage slot on the T-Buster and withdrew a freshly-generated Power Ring and stowed the T-Buster back in hammerspace. He activated the Power Ring and set the three stools on top of the table before hoisting the full load overhead. It took him several minutes of walking to bring the hefty load into the Academy's perimeter wall, setting down in the grass not far from the side-door to the dining hall. "Now, for dinner," he said to himself. He ran over to the kitchen, where he found the head-chef he had met before doing some end-of-evening cleanup. Tails tapped him on the shoulder to catch his attention. "Excuse me, Mr. Chef? Do you mind if I make my own meal? It's a bit of a special occasion."

The white-clad man turned to him and gave him an inquisitive look "Well, I normally don't let anyone else except myself and my sous-chef and his coworkers to use my kitchen, but since you helped us out so much, Warrior, I'll allow it. What do you have in mind?"

"I'm sure I can make something with whatever you are willing to spare," Tails replied.

"Well, I had a student attempt to plan a romantic dinner for a girl, but he was tragically left behind. He never came to collect the ingredients. You're more than welcome to use them. They are over in the ice room in a brown bag, over that way." The chef pointed to a door on the far end of the room, nestled between two stacks of produce crates.

"Thanks so much! I'll get right on it and get out of your hair," Tails said, walking over to the door. He yanked the heavy oak door open, receiving a blast of cold air to the face that caused him to squint. Inside, a thick sheet of ice coated every shelf, topped off with stacks of various vegetables, fruits, and meats. Just to the left of the door, a brown leather sack sat on a small block of ice, separated from the rest of the supplies.

"This must be the one," he thought, grabbing the bag by the neck and giving it a quick shake to remove the ice that had formed on it. He stepped out of the room and pushed the door shut, then walked over to the work surfaces coated with cutting boards. Dumping the bag onto the table revealed a variety of ingredients including two steaks, cherries, salad materials, black pepper, and other necessary supplies. "Perfect! Steaks are high-class, just what I need to one-up Louise. I'm guessing these are for the steak's sauce," he thought, setting aside the cherries and alcohol. "Next, the supplies," Tails thought. He walked over to a hanging rack of pans and pots and withdrew a small selection of each, carrying them over to his workspace under the watchful eye of the chef. "Excuse me," Tails said, turning to the chef. "Where could I find some knives?"

"Two drawers to your left. Do be careful," the man replied.

Tails nodded and reached over to the drawer, withdrawing two suitable knives. He began splitting the cherries and de-pitting them, followed by crushing the peppercorns with the flat of the blade. He dumped the salad greens and additional toppings in one of the pots and gave it a quick toss before setting it aside, turning his attention to the magic stove range. With the assistance of the chef to get it started, one of the several burner eyes put forth a small red flame, adjustable via a small lever at the back of the stove. "Perfect," he muttered as he reached for a bottle of olive oil, lightly coating the pan. "It's been a while since I've had to cook anything other than Sonic's chilidogs, so we'll see whether I give myself food poisoning by the end of the night..."

* * *

 

Within thirty minutes of searing steaks, melting butter and making the pan sauce with the wine, the dinner was fully assembled and plated on a single large serving platter. "Now THAT'S what I call a meal!" Tails exclaimed out loud, admiring his work by taking a deep waft of the dish. "I think this will work out great."

Suddenly, a round of percussive applause filled the air behind him. "Very good, Warrior!" the chef said, patting Tails on the shoulder with his massive hand. "Your timing on the heat was perfect for a tender medium-rare steak, and the sauce smells perfect in  
proportions! You demonstrated great skill in my kitchen, and thus are always welcome to use it as you wish. I'm sure the lady will enjoy her meal!"

Tails shook his head. "Oh no, this was just for me. I got invited by one master to the dining hall, then kicked out and called uncivilized by the other, so I decided to take things into my own hands. Thanks again for letting me use these! I'll be sure to drop by with my own supplies and try more things. Do you know where there might be a couple blankets, tablecloths, and maybe a candle or two I could use?"

"There's a back room, nothing but supplies inside. Please wash the cloths and bring them back when you're done."

"Will do! Thank you so much!" Tails replied with a bow. He walked over to a door in the back of the kitchen and withdrew a set of silverware, a candle, a napkin, a large tablecloth, and another smaller blanket to lay over his stool. He wrapped everything in the tablecloth and hoisted it over his shoulder before fetching his meal and kicking the door open to head outside. "Nice guy," he thought to himself. "I'll have to make him something nice to pay him back for this,"

Outside, the last shreds of light had disappeared over the horizon, leaving the sky a deep black freckled with stars. "A good night tonight!" he mumbled to himself as he carried his load to the table. He took down the stools and set the bundle on the table, slowly untied the knot with one hand before setting his plate down and arranging his seat. Finally, he took a seat, drew his T-Buster and used its plasma-cutter function to ignite the candle. "This should look nice to Louise, if she tries to bother me," he thought, putting his T-Buster away and using his silverware to carve his first bite of the steak. "No yelling "masters", a candlelight dinner. Life doesn't get better than this! I don't think I could get this on Mobius even, with all my maintenance work piling up, because I can't do anything even if I worry. Good riddance!"

He barely had a moment to enjoy his first bite of steak before his ears registered the soft shuffle of footsteps on grass. In a moment of panic, Tails launched off of his stool and spun around, his sharp steak knife in hand and ready to fight. In the combined light of his candle and the twin moons, he could see Tabitha standing a few feet away, the moonlight glinting from her glasses.

"Oh, it's just you, Tabitha," Tails said with a sigh of relief. "Sorry, I thought it might have been those two bums from earlier trying to ambush me. Why aren't you inside eating with the other students?"

"Looking for you," Tabitha replied, her voice hardly more than a murmur.

"Oh, you were helping Kirche look for me? Sorry for all the commotion, I just got frustrated and wanted to get away from Louise. Hey, if you haven't had dinner yet, you are welcome to stay," he replied, taking a seat on his stool. "I made some steaks for myself from the kitchen, but there's more than enough to share."

Tabitha nodded her head and walked over, setting her staff against the table and pulling up another stool. She borrowed his silverware and cut a small slice of the untouched second steak, gently lifting it to her mouth and savoring the slice.

After a moment, Tails broke the silence with a quick question. "What do you think? It's been a while since I've cooked like this, since I rarely have the time to do grocery shopping, and my friend Sonic usually just stocks up on chilidog supplies and nothing but."

Tabitha nodded in reply. "Good."

"Glad you enjoy it," he said, nodding. Tabitha sat in silence and continued to chew, seemingly deep in thought. "Well, that may be all the conversation I get out of her tonight," he thought, turning his eyes upward to the night sky. "The stars are pretty, though. Maybe she'll want to talk about that."

Soon, another round of footsteps peeled his eyes away from the stars, redirecting his attention to some point beyond the candle's flame from the center of the table. "Heeey, Tails! There you were! I was worried about you!" a familiar voice called. Soon, Kirche came running up to the table out of the darkness, no longer obscured by the light of the fire. "Wow, where'd you get all of this?! This is beautiful! I brought you a meal from the hall because you left, but it seems you got yourself covered. That looks delicious!" she blurted, setting her plate on the table and taking a seat.

Tails shrugged. "I made it all myself. The table took about five or six minutes, the meal about a half hour. Sorry to make you worry, I sorta got in my 'zone' and forgot about everything, for the most part."

"Aww, that's soo cute!" Kirche exclaimed. "Mind if I join you two? I haven't eaten yet, looking for you and all."

"Sure. Feel free to help yourself to this stuff, we've got more than enough food between the two meals," Tails said, getting up from his seat. "I'll go grab two extra sets of silverware and some drinks, I guess." He jogged back to the kitchen and raided the supply closet, retrieving two sets of silverware, three small plates, and three glasses. Looking around for something to drink that wasn't alcohol, he found a small indoor well and took a moment to fill the glasses with fresh water, still icy-cold from the well's bottom, before slowly carrying everything back out to the table. He took his seat and handed a set of silverware and a glass to both girls, now sitting on either side of him. The two girls took a plate and began dissecting the two meals, taking small portions of everything onto their own plate before leaving the rest for Tails.

Several minutes of silent eating passed, until Kirche finally spoke up. "Hey Tails? I know Louise should be the one to say this, but, sorry for what happened back there. She can be a bit selfish sometimes, it's just something you'll have to put up with."

Tails nodded, taking a bite of potatoes from the plate Kirche brought out. "Yeah, I suppose I will. All I gotta say is, I feel sorry for Saito. He's stuck with her 24/7, and that can't be fun."

"Yup. Tonight, you've got me, darling, so we'll try to make up for what she did."

Tails gave her a weak smile, trying to comprehend the true meaning of her statement. "Uhh, sure... Thanks?" he said, trying to be polite. He returned to his meal and finished off the last of his dinner before resuming the conversation. "Hey guys, I have a favor to ask of you two."

The two girls looked at him. "Yes?" Kirche asked.

"If we see Louise tonight when she leaves the dining hall, try to be nice to her," he said, locking eyes with both girls momentarily. "I'm guessing that she's been putting up with a lot recently, being teased for having a human familiar, which I take is rather odd. It doesn't help that you, Kirche, call her a 'zero', either," he added, turning to the red-haired girl.

Kirche thought about it for a moment before responding. "…well, she is, whether you like it or not. She's probably the first Noble that hasn't been able to use magic properly."

In response, Tails simply gave Kirche a long, electric stare that caused her to back down a bit. "She can use magic, just not in the ways you expect," he suggested. "Perhaps she's a fire mage that specializes in spontaneous combustion such as explosions, as opposed to a continuous flame like Professor Colbert or yourself? Anyways, promise me you'll do your best not to tread on her toes for a while. If not for her sake, for mine, since she takes it out on me and Saito when she gets mad."

The two girls nodded in response. "I never thought of it that way," Kirche stated. "Alright, I'll do my best. But if she starts arguing with me, I'm not necessarily going to back down. We can't let her become bossier than she is already."

"Sounds fine. Thanks for understanding."

Soon, students began to filter out of the dining hall back to their dorms. Just as Tails predicted, Louise came out of the dining hall, and upon spotting Tails seated with his other two masters, stormed over in a big fuss.

"What the hell?!" she cried, her eyes wide. "Where'd you get all of that dining equipment and food? The furniture… what?... Did you steal those from someone?!"

Tails shook his head and grinned. "No, no, I built the table. See?" He got off of his stool and walked over to the other side of the table to lift the tablecloth, revealing the caramel-colored wood. "As for the food, I cooked these dishes myself, and Kirche brought this other dish, thinking I was without food after I ran off."

Louise crossed her arms and gave him a resigned stare. "So you build and cook? Fine, but that doesn't mean you aren't my familiar, so what I say has just as much authority as them. Anyways, get to bed. It's late, and the Princess' competition is in two days. We need you up and training as soon as possible tomorrow, so that you can rehearse for us after morning classes."

"Hey, it's my night with him, so leave him alone!" Kirche exclaimed, pointing at at Louise. "I-"

"-Chill, Kirche," Tails interrupted, holding up a hand to silence her. He then turned his attention back to Louise, matching her stare. "Sure Louise, we'll be in bed as soon as we finish up here. We're almost done here. Don't beat Saito up too much, please."

Louise pointed an accusatory finger at the yellow fox. "Don't you tell me what to do with MY Familiar! He doesn't belong to you. Anyways, goodnight!" She turned on her heels and strode off toward her dorm without giving any of the three seated at the table a chance to talk back.

Tails leaned back on his stool and let out a silent sigh of relief, running his left hand over the back of his ears. "Well, that went about as well as I hoped," he mumbled to himself. He returned to his stargazing while the two girls finished up their meal, occasionally stopping to rub his neck as it got sore. "The stars sure are nice tonight!" he said a little louder.

The prompt for conversation elicited no more than a thoughtful "Hmm" from Tabitha, but Kirche decided to keep it going. "Yeah, they are! I've never spent much time outside about now, I've always been asleep or dealing with boys knocking on my door."

"Am I going to have to deal with them tonight as well?" Tails asked.

"Probably. There are usually at least one or two a week, and I haven't had any yet this week. Say, do you think the stars are similar in your home as here?"

"Possibly," Tails said with a shrug. "It would be a pretty big coincidence, because we could be in entirely different sections of the universe, but it's possible that our planets share the same space over dimensions. There was a pretty cool theory back on Saito's world that extremely small bits of matter are constantly flipping between dimensions, so some of Saito's world could be flicking in and out of existence here, and, say, some of this table could be flicking in and out of my world. Not sure if it's true, but it would be cool to find out."

"Wow, you guys really know a lot in your world! How do you figure it all out?"

"A long time of study. We didn't have magic, so we instead developed scientific queries, especially after most nations on Earth, Saito's world and Chris' world, came into a peaceful relationship. My world hasn't had that luxury due to a lot of global takeover attempts, but I still do plenty of research on my own."

By now, both girls had finished their meals and pushed back their plates and dirty napkins. "Thanks for coming out guys, it was fun," Tails continued. "I'll clear the plates and deal with cleaning up. Tabitha, I'll see you tomorrow. Kirche, I'll be up in a bit."  
Kirche nodded. "Alright. Thanks for dinner! It was really good. I'm on the fourth floor of the red-roofed tower, third door on the left."

"Thank you," Tabitha added.

"No problem! Glad you guys enjoyed it," Tails concluded. He began to collect the several dishes as the two girls stood up from their seat and retreated to their dorm rooms. With a bit of balancing practice, he was able to slowly carry the several plates and silverware in one hand and the ball of various cloths in the other back to the kitchen. He set the cloths next to the small well and pulled over a large bin to set the dishes in before drawing some water to fill the bin. Fifteen minutes of labor with a sponge and some soap, and the cloths and plates were thoroughly clean and ready for storage. He replaced the plates and cloths back in their storage room before dumping the water and heading for Kirche's dorm, the red-roofed tower built into the perimeter wall.

"Well, that went better than expected," Tails thought as he climbed the stairs to Kirche's floor. "Both of them were remarkably polite, even with Louise being sorta rude. I wonder why Louise is so high-strung these days. I can't imagine it's ALL in the name-calling people do." After three flights of stairs, he finally reached Kirche's room and gently opened the door. Inside, Kirche, dressed in what could hardly be called "night attire", sat over Saito, who was sprawled out on the floor. Next to her, a large red salamander-esque creature with a flaming tail stood on its two hind legs, staring at the window in the far wall of the room. Kirche and Saito looked up from Saito to see Tails standing in the doorway, thoroughly confused. "Oh, hey Tails! Do me a favor and watch out for the boys that pop up in the window behind me. They're being a nuisance."

"Uhh… Sure," he replied, shutting the door and taking a seat at a table to his left. "What are you… you know what? I've a feeling any knowledge of this is gonna bite me in the rear, so I'll leave it between you two. Pretend I don't exist."

Throughout the evening, several boys popped up into Kirche's window, but Tails either gave them a quick stun with his T-Buster or left it to the salamander to send them packing with a quick fireball. Eventually, however, word got around to Louise who came and kicked Kirche's door in with unexpected strength. "Saito, you DOG!" she yelled. "How should I have known you'd be here! Tails, you aren't out of this either for letting him do this!"

Tails simply gave her a blank face of boredom and tiredness. "Hey, I don't worry about what people do in their free time. I just assumed he's here of his own will. Maybe it's a different story, so don't jump to conclusions," he said. "But since you'll get pissed either way, at least give me enough time to hang myself so I can skip dealing with your shit," he thought in addition, but didn't dare to say.

Louise quickly returned her attention to Saito, making a massive fuss about peeling him out from underneath Kirche and beating him senseless on the spot before dragging him away. Kirche simply stood up and returned to her bed, shutting her window on the way. "Well, that was exciting," she said.

"Maybe to you," Tails replied with a yawn. "I'm guessing you have a thing for Saito, and every other boy on campus has a thing for you?"

"That's an abrupt way of putting it, but yes, I'd say so."

"And I'm also assuming that Saito wasn't here of his own will, since I haven't heard of you proposing anything like this to him in advance?"

Kirche nodded and smiled. "I did send Flame here to fetch him, yes. I don't think with Louise breathing down his back, he would have come willingly. It was worth it… Anyhow, I'm tired. I'm headed to bed. You are welcome to join me whenever you're tired."

"Well, given you have an entourage of boys after you, I think I'd be signing my death warrant sharing a bed with you. Besides, after what you just displayed to Saito, I think I'd rather sleep on the roof or in the grass downstairs anyway. Do you have a spare set of sheets and a quilt I could use?"

"Are you sure you don't want to join me?" she asked, sitting up in a way that displayed her "assets".

"Sorry, that's not my thing," Tails replied. "Yes or no on the sheets?"

Kirche let out a sigh and shook her head with a smile. "Bottom drawer on my dresser. 'Night."

Tails hopped up from the desk and walked over to Kirche's dresser, pulling open the bottom drawer and withdrawing several heavy, folded quilts and thinner sheets that he thought he would need. Content that Kirche wasn't watching him, he flicked his tails into life and gently opened Kirche's window, shutting it from the outside before flying up to the top of the tower.

On the roof, a small weather-vane-esque spike that protruded from the center of the dome, catching Tails' attention. He quickly unfolded the sheets and quilts and began laying them out on the flattest part of the dome next to the spike, wrapping himself up tight in his sheets to keep from rolling off the roof. Once he was fully situated, Tails laid back in his bundle of sheets and watched the stars and moons as they progressed across the sky. "Wow, this feels so weird, not seeing any moving satellites or space stations," he thought as his eyes scanned the scenery above. "The two moons is also really weird, something I never really noticed. Seeing two large celestial objects like that reminds me of Space Colony ARK and the various Death Eggs from years past. Too bad Sonic isn't here to see this, I'm sure he'd love it. Plenty of free running space, with no rules or anything to abide to. Not sure he'd like being a familiar though. Then again, I'm not sure he'd have been caught when running away, either. Probably would have just left Saito and bolted, or perhaps thought kissing normal and left him. Who knows?" He let out a loud yawn, shifting around in his bundle to get comfortable. "Whatever, I've got a big day tomorrow. Might as well get some sleep." With that, he closed his eyes and nodded off into sleep, mind blank for the day to come.


	10. Season 1 Chapter 10

Season 1 Chapter 10

The sun finally peeked over the horizon, washing everything in the orange glow of dawn. Within a few minutes, Tails was already restless in "bed" from the light's warmth, wrapped in his blankets on the roof. He cracked his eyes open a tad, only to wish the sun never existed. "That wasn't the brightest move ever… or maybe it was," Tails thought sarcastically. He finally managed to adjust his eyes to the new light and get up, going about cleaning up up his bedding. Collecting everything in his hands, he gave his tails a quick flick to warm up, and took a step off of the roof. The cold morning air whistled through his fur as he plunged toward the ground, engaging his tails at the last moment in a full-throttle burst, bringing himself to a gentle touchdown on the soft grass. No one was out this early, and the dew was still glistening on the grass, except where the blast of air from Tails' landing had flattened the green blades.

Readjusting his bundle of fabric, he mozied on over to the kitchen to see if anything was being prepared for breakfast. Unfortunately, the none of the cooking staff was in, even the head chef. "I really ought to learn his name. He's been so polite to me," the fox thought. He grabbed a couple of red apples from a nearby bin, then headed over to a small washboard and bucket. He set the apples on a nearby bench and filled up the bucket with fresh water from the kitchen's indoor well, then began to scrub the various fabrics clean with soap. He heard a door open and shut behind him, but made nothing of it, assuming it to be one of the cooking staff. He turned his head to see a black-haired girl in a maid uniform, carrying a basket of bedsheets.

"Morning," Tails said, greeting her as cheerfully as he could given the time of day.

The girl seemed taken aback by his greeting, but quickly recovered. "Oh, uhh... Hello! Are you the one the staff members are calling the Warrior?" the girl asked.

"I've been called that, mostly by the head chef," he replied with a shrug. "I don't suppose you'd happen to know his name? I feel awkward using his facilities without being able to thank him by name."

"His name is Marteau. What's yours?"

"Miles, although my friends just call me Tails. And your name is…?"

"Siesta. It's a pleasure to meet you. Do you need help with those?" she offered, nodding toward the sheets he was working over.

Tails shook his head. "No thanks, I should probably get used to this if I'm going to be living as a familiar," he replied, returning to his work while he talked. "Saito seems to do the work for Louise, but I'll be doing it for Kirche and Tabitha, undoubtedly."

"Are you sure? I know you need to go train for the Princess' competition tomorrow, so I'd be glad to help."

"Oh, crud, yeah. Forgot about that..." he thought, groaning inwardly at the thought of exercising so early in the day. "Actually, that'd help a lot, thanks!" Tails responded. Nodding thankfully, he relinquished the washing equipment and laundry to Siesta. She took over with a short smile, setting her basket of laundry down next to the tub of soapy water and dropping to her knees to set into her work. The fox grabbed the apples he'd left and headed outside, where, surprisingly, Louise and Saito were already waiting.

"Tails, come with me," the girl ordered, beckoning him over. "I need to run into town to pick up some supplies, and we need to get you two some equipment for your sparring tomorrow."

"Sure" Tails replied, energetic at the thought of being someplace other than the Academy. "What kinds of supplies do you need?"

"None of your business. Come on, the carriage is already waiting," Louise answered. Shrugging to the Japanese boy, Tails and Saito silently followed the girl to a carriage waiting in front of the gate, complete, with a sleepy-looking driver reading what looked like the morning newspaper. The group boarded, and with a crack of a whip, the carriage set off for town. Tails watched patiently out the window throughout the journey as Saito quickly fell back asleep and Louise pondered her own thoughts.

* * *

 

After a couple hour's ride, the carriage arrived in a nearby town, where the group disembarked. "Go over there to the armory and look around for suitable practice weapons," Louise instructed, pointing to a small side-street. "I'll be done shopping and over to pay in a half hour or so. Don't break anything," The pink-haired girl took off toward another shop down the street, while Tails and Saito made their way to the indicated store.

On entry, a wave of familiar scents and sights welcomed Tails; namely, the smells of oil and freshly sanded wood, and the dull gleam of sharpened metal. A large-nosed old man greeted them with a brief, silent smile. Tails and Saito began at opposite ends of the shop, making their way around the display walls.

Tails, beaming like a kid in a candy store, gathered three blades that felt good and began to compare the balance points as well as sharpness. One sword, a straight-bladed falchion, was well-tempered, but had an improper balance point, that felt good in the short term but wore down the hand fast. Another, a hand-and-a-half sword, wasn't up to Tails' spec in metallurgy, which made him feel it was more prone to breaking under impact. The third, a large claymore, was sufficient in both balance and tempering, but was much larger than someone of his size could wield suitably. He felt that if there were a choice, he could always reforge the hand-and-a-half to better quality. "But at that point, I might as well make my own blade. Besides, it's only for the demonstration, then I can go back to my T-Buster," he thought to himself. After taking one more lap of the shop's display walls, Tails returned the other two blades and set the hand-and-a-half on the cashier's counter. "There's someone else paying for this," he explained to the cashier. "She'll be in in a moment, I'm sure."

"Of course. No rush," The man replied. "Your friend has a mighty fine taste in swords, I see."

Tails turned around and mentally facepalmed as Saito held aloft what appeared to be a gold-plated sword, striking a heroic pose with his gem-riddled blade. Within minutes, Tails knew that Saito's enjoyment wouldn't last long as Louise walked in and gave him a withering scowl. Saito placed the blade on the counter, happy with his selection. The old man thought for a moment.

"Twenty-four gold, for the two. Four for this one," the old man said, pointing at Tails' selection, "and twenty for this one," he added, pointing at Saito's choice.

"Saito, you idiot, that's much too expensive! Get one from the discount bin, I don't have much left after my own shopping," Louise barked, sending the boy scurrying to put the expensive sword back. "What do you have for two hundred bronze and under?" she asked, this time to the old man.

The old man walked over to a barrel in the back corner of the shop, and selected a wide, straight-bladed katana-esque sword coated in rust. "This one is for a gold and five silver, probably the last blade I have under two hundred," the old man mentioned, handing the sword to Louise.

"I'll take that one and the one the fox picked out," Louise stated, muttering something under her breath that no one else could quite hear. She shelled out a couple of coins from a small purse she had hidden in her sleeve, then collected the two blades and headed for the carriage. Careful not to further provoke Louise, Tails hopped into the carriage and took his seat, ready for the silent ride home.

* * *

 

When the carriage arrived, Tails grabbed his new blade and immediately took off, not wanting to be stuck with Louise for the day. Most morning classes had already begun, so he went to Professor Colbert's workshop to begin tending to the new blade. After a quick polish and oil, the fox re-emerged from the workshop with his sword, only to be greeted by the blue dragon from earlier.

"Hey, dragon," he said, turning the sword around in his hand so the blade pointed behind him, to avoid appearing aggressive. "Sorry I don't know your name, Tabitha never told me. Why aren't you with her?" The dragon made a variety of sounds, licking its lips with a scaly pink tongue. "What, you hungry? You need me to get you something from the kitchen?" He asked, earning a head nod in response. "Alright, be right back." He took off for the kitchen, setting his sword against the door frame outside as he entered.

Inside, he found Siesta finishing up the laundry he had left her with, alongside all of her own laundry she had completed. "Hey Siesta, do you mind if I have a few more apples and some cheese?" he asked.

"Sure, help yourself! Just don't tell Marteau, he might get mad that I let you take them. Cheese should be in the pantry by the wheel, in the cold storage by the wedge," Siesta replied, striking up a humming tune and returning to her work.

"Thanks a lot!" Tails said as he ran around the room, beginning to gather food. After several minutes of filtering through the basket of apples for the best-looking ones and setting them aside, he grabbed a small burlap satchel and filled it with the apples and a few wedges of cheese, then headed for the door. Before he could get out, however, a heavy hand grabbed him by the shoulder and whipped him around.

"Where do you think you're headed with my food?!" an angry Marteau demanded, eyeing the fox and the loot he had collected with intense scrutiny.

"Sorry, sir," Tails replied sheepishly, setting the bag down. "A familiar I share a master with was asking for food. I think she forgot to feed it. I felt bad for it and came to get it a little something."

Marteau let out a sigh, shaking his head. "Next time you take food without telling me, I'm revoking your cooking rights to my kitchen. It's a pain as it is to inventory for so much food, but it gets worse when people take things without telling me. Tell me what you took, so I can write it down."

"Fifteen red apples and four cheese wedges from the cooler, sir."

"Fine. Go get that food to the familiar. You can help with the cleaning after lunch as payment, since food isn't free for familiars," the man added with a sly grin. "Food is part of a master's budget, so anything you take personally, you normally pay for."

"Thank you, sir!" Tails exclaimed, darting out the door quickly in fear that Marteau would add to the sentence or reclaim the food. He grabbed his sword on the way out and returned to the blue dragon, sitting where it had been at the workshop.

"I got you some apples and cheese! I'm assuming you're more of a fan of meat like me, but it's all I could get without Marteau throwing me out of the kitchen by force. Here you go!" Tails said, setting his sword aside and offering an apple to the dragon. The beast plucked the apple out of Tails' hand with a quick flash of its tongue, chewing and swallowing almost instantly. Tails backed off a few steps and withdrew a new apple from the bag.

"Catch!" Tails called, tossing the apple to the dragon. It reached out and snapped the apple from the air, letting out a growl of delight. They continued playing their little game as the students streamed out of the academy from their morning classes, occasionally pausing to watch as the two familiars played. The dragon didn't miss a single apple or wedge of cheese, snapping the final apple out of the air with a satisfied grin. The dragon nearly knocked Tails over as it nuzzled the fox with it's head in thanks, then sat back on its haunches contentedly. Behind the beast, Tabitha appeared out of a crowd of students, her blue hair catching Tails' attention. She wasn't looking at her book for once, he noticed, instead carrying it under her arm alongside her large staff.

"Hey Tabitha! How was the morning class? Any good?" Tails asked.

Tabitha gave a short nod. "Lunch," She said in her usual, quiet way.

"Alright, sounds good. Am I eating outside on the table again?"

"Inside," Tabitha said, turning and walking toward the dining hall, motioning for Tails to catch up. Jogging over, they entered the hall and took a seat at the end of one of the long banquet tables. Very few students were seated in the hall, as the food was still being brought out by the serving crew, who were scattering large roasts, pots of various stews, and large serving bowls of mixed greens along the tables. Tails waited silently while Tabitha preoccupied herself in her book, until an array of platters were finally delivered to their end of the table. She then began serving herself a few small cuts of meat, salad, and a cup-sized bowl of what appeared to be a corn soup. Tails silently followed suit. With the meal served, Tabitha put down her book beside her staff and began to eat.

"Tabitha, aren't you worried about me being in here? I don't think Louise is the only one against me being here," Tails asked, looking around at the various students. A few of them were still staring and whispering to each other, despite having been seated for several minutes. Tabitha shook her head and returned to eating.

"Well, thanks for letting me in. I don't think Marteau had any spare food for me to cook up, so this works out great."

Tabitha nodded. "For feeding Sylphid," she said.

"Oh, that? it's no big deal. She was fun to play with," Tails responded, taking up his silverware and carving off a bite of porkchop. "Syphid. I'll have to remember that one," he thought...

* * *

 

A half hour passed as the two ate in silence. Lunch passed relatively without trouble, aside from the occasional looks or whispers that Tabitha put down with a cold glare. None of the nobles were willing to mess with the mysterious blue-haired girl, thus leaving the two alone to a peaceful lunch. When they had their fill, the two got up and left, returning to Professor Colbert's workshop. Tails picked up his sword from against the hut where he had left it, briefly holding it up to show it to Tabitha before returning it to his side. "Hey Tabitha, I'm going to go train for the competition tomorrow. Do you want to come? I can help with Sylphid if you like," he asked, noticing that the blue dragon had disappeared.

Tabitha nodded and let out a shrill whistle with her fingers, calling Sylphid like she had before. As the dragon approached from the woods once more, the two walked off to the Academy gates, ready to train.


	11. Season 1 Chapter 11

Season 1 Chapter 11

The air hummed as Tails swung his new blade, hacking away at jury-rigged targets made of sticks and ice-locked joints as he practiced the old techniques he'd picked up from Antoine years before. The sticks offered little resistance to the freshly-sharpened blade, cutting cleanly through them with little resistance. Stabs, swipes and the occasional kick made short work of the targets, leaving behind nothing but large fragments of bark and fleshy, fresh-cut shards of wood. As he began to collect the garbage left over of the targets, Tabitha closed her book and stood up, stepping out of the shade the Academy's stone perimeter wall provided.

"What's up?" Tails asked, stowing his sword in the cheap wood and canvas sheath the blade had came with.

"Riding practice," she said, pointing toward Sylphid with her staff. Hearing Tabitha speak, the dragon snapped out of its afternoon nap almost immediately, ready to serve.

Tails nodded. "Sounds good to me, I suppose."

The two mounted the large blue dragon, taking a seat in the gaps between the softball-sized lumps that dotted the length of her spine. With a sudden lurch and a blast of her wings, Sylphid leaped into the air and began to gain altitude. The Academy quickly shrunk in the distance as she picked up speed, soon approaching the bottoms of one of the many small clusters of clouds that dotted the sky. Under Tabitha's control, Sylphid leveled out and performed an aileron roll, tucking her wings in to pick up rotational speed as Tails clung on to her for dear life. "Jeez, how does Tabitha stay on without any seatbelts or saddles?" he thought, watching the blue-haired girl with amazement as she silently gazed into the blue abyss in front of her, guiding the dragon on a rollercoaster of exotic maneuvers with the slightest touch.

Suddenly, an idea popped into Tails' head. "Hey, I should be practicing this stuff too. It's been a while since I've had to do any stunt flying, and I bet the new rocket boots could make me faster!" he thought, looking down at the new modifications attached to his shoes. "Hey Tabitha, watch this!" he yelled, letting go of Sylphid and allowing himself to be flung off as she rolled and twisted. He brought his twin tails up to speed, coming to a comfortable cruising speed alongside the dragon and her rider. With a grin, he rotated in midair to face backward, maximizing his forward thrust by giving his tails a more optimal angle. "It's been ages since I've had time to go flying for fun! It feels great!" he yelled, but he could tell that she couldn't hear him. He pulled up his wristcomm and pressed a button, igniting the thrusters in his shoes. Sylphid let out a loud growl of excitement as Tails picked up speed, giving the beast a casual thumbs-up as he shot past.

Once Tails had gained suitable ground ahead of the dragon, he flipped around to his usual helicopter-style flight, holding his legs out flat behind him and spreading his arms wide. He performed several stunts of his own while Tabitha and Sylphid caught up, gaining altitude as they went. With a sudden stop of his tails and rocket shoes, he tucked his legs in and plummeted through the clouds like child doing a cannonball into a pond. The fox hurtled to the ground at frightening speed, stopping himself just short of certain death with his tails and shoes at full throttle as he skated along the grassy field. Sylphid descended to the field, gliding peacefully alongside Tails over the windswept grass.

"Man, if Shadow could see me now, he might even be impressed!" Tails thought with a grin. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see Tabitha waving him over, back to Sylphid. "Must be time to go back. Oh well, at least it was nice to get out and about." He made his way over to the dragon, carefully avoiding her wings as he made his way up onto her back. Sylphid slowly banked left, turning around and gaining altitude once more to make her way back to the Academy.

Below, Tails watched as the boulder-speckled fields gave way to forests, then back to grassy flatland as they approached the Academy from a high altitude. "Nice view!" he thought as his gaze traced the road that lead out of the Academy's main gate, splitting into several junctions as it went. "I bet Sonic would love to spend some time out here, exploring and finding all the cool spots to chill out."

Preoccupied with the sights, Tails hardly noticed as Tabitha suddenly slipped sideways off of Sylphid's back. Doing a surprised double-take, he let out a sudden "Oh, shit!" and slid off of Sylphid's back as the dragon dropped into a dive, using his rocket shoes to speed up his descent as he fell. Within moments, he was able to come alongside Tabitha as she fell, grabbing her and flipping around to slow their fall. With the help of his tails, he was able to bring both of them to a soft landing just inside of the Academy's main gate. "You okay? What happened? You suddenly just… fell off! Did you get light-headed or lose consciousness or something?" he asked, setting her down.

Without a word, Tabitha casually dusted herself off and waited for Sylphid to join them on the ground. "Training," she said, her voice barely audible.

"…ooooh," he said, realizing his mistake. "That was probably a training drill for Sylphid, wasn't it? In case you fall off in flight. Makes sense, sorry for ruining it."

Tabitha shook her head, then pointed to the central tower of the Academy. "Afternoon class."

"Alright. See you later," Tails said. He watched as the blue-haired girl dismissed her dragon to the forest and wandered off toward the central tower, her staff gently bobbing up and down as she walked. Bored, he drew his sword and looked over the blade, inspecting the edge for any damage done during practice. "I bet I could build a better blade, if I could get some quality steel," he thought, gently inserting the sword back into it's sheath. He made his way back to Professor Colbert's workshop, his mind racing about new designs for his upcoming sword.

Entering the small wooden building, he undid the belt of his sheath and withdrew the sword, laying the two separately on a clean space of workbench near the entrance to his own workshop downstairs. He sized the blade up mentally, imagining how much metal he could reclaim from melting down the sword and re-using the iron. "Not much room for improvement," he thought, reaching for a large whetstone to buff out the dulled sections of the blade he'd created from practice earlier.

As he finished up with maintaining his sword, a lightbulb went on in his head. He set the gleaming blade down and climbed down into his workspace, the air inside the metal-walled box unusually cold and dry. He walked a short way along the wall, bringing up his T-Buster and engaging the plasma-cutter function. The yellow beam sprung into life, digging deep into the thick metal wall as he cut out a large rectangle, long enough for the blade he intended to make. He bolted back up the ladder to the upper workshop to fetch a couple candles and a pair of metalworking tongs, rushing back down the ladder to extract the cut rectangle from the wall before it re-solidified. Lighting the candle wicks with the molten edges of the metal slab, he began carefully carving by the candlelight, pausing occasionally to let the metal cool as he handled it with the tongs...

* * *

 

Several hours later, he held his new sword aloft in the dim candlelight. The blade, a two-and-a-half-foot-long curved scimitar, gleamed with a teal reflection of it's tempered metal. A small slot, carved into the back edge of the large, flat tip section, gaped back at him as it awaited the final touch. Tails shut down his T-Buster and opened up the storage slot, extracting a fresh Power Ring with his teeth. Stowing the red arm cannon, he took the Power Ring and pressed it into the slot in the blade, snapping it into place with a tight pressure fit.

"It's perfect!" he thought aloud, gazing at his logo he'd penciled in with a fine plasma beam. "The weighted tip gives it better swing strength at my farthest reach, without being too unbalanced. I can access a Power Ring without needing my T-Buster up, and it makes a nice second grip for blocking, too." He waved the blade around and took a few practice swings, his eyes following the golden glowing torus as it carved a blur of light through the dark space. "Now all it needs is a good oil coat and a leather grip on the handle, and it'll be ready."

Blowing out the candles, Tails grabbed the metalworking tongs and slowly worked his way back up the ladder with one hand. He set the tongs on the workbench where he'd found them and stepped out into the evening air. Students were flowing out of the central tower, splitting off into smaller groups as they headed toward their respective dorm towers. Over the heads of the herd of students, he could see the curved top of Tabitha's staff making its way toward him. Tabitha emerged from the crowd carrying her usual book in addition to a couple of textbooks with several loose papers sticking out of them, completely scrawled over in black ink to the very edges with notes.

"Hey, Tabitha!" Tails greeted her, meeting her in the middle of the grass field. "Like the sword? I decided to replace the sword Louise bought me, because it wasn't very good and might break."

The blue-haired girl looked over the blade he held aloft with her cold, emotionless gaze. "…unusual," she commented, silently noting the coloration and odd hook-like shape.

"Yeah, it's based off an old blade design I saw back on Earth," Tails said. "I thought it would come in handy. Anyways, dinner. Inside or outside?"

"Outside," Tabitha replied.

Tails nodded. "I'll go grab some food from Marteau and meet you at the table, I suppose." He returned his sword to the workshop and jogged off across the campus to the kitchen, being careful to enter quietly to avoid making a ruckus. In the center of the kitchen, Marteau stood next to the indoor well on a step-stool, overseeing every member of his crew with a hawk-like gaze as they bustled around the room. Tails weaved his way across the floor, avoiding cooks and waiting staff as they rushed prepared ingredients and completed dishes across the room. As he approached the head chef, Marteau noticed him and stepped down from his small throne with a grin.

"Hi, Marteau! I need two plates of whatever's on for tonight's menu," Tails asked, struggling make himself heard over the din of the kitchen crew's order-yelling and other noise. "Tabitha wants to eat outside tonight."

"Sure thing, Warrior!" Marteau replied. He stepped back up on his stool and clapped his hands, barking out names and orders with an intense authority. A couple of chefs doled out a variety of fancy meats, soups and veggies onto a tray, handing it off to a waiter that scrambled to serve some drinks and bring it all across the room to Marteau. The mountainous head-chef gratefully accepted the tray and handed it off to Tails, returning to directing his staff without another word.

Tails took the tray and slowly made his way out of the kitchen, collecting a couple sets of blankets, napkins and silverware as he went. He carried the tray and bundle of goods across the campus to his table, where Tabitha was already seated, reading a book as she waited. Spreading out the blanket as a tablecloth, he handed Tabitha a platter of food and a cup of wine and set the serving tray aside.

Digging into his meal, he noticed a detailed illustration on the front cover of the book Tabitha held. "What's that?" he asked, pointing toward the book.

"Ivaldi," she replied, setting the book down and taking up her glass of water.

"Ivaldi? Interesting name. Too bad I don't have my HUD, since I can't read any of the languages here…"

Tabitha gave him a confused look. "…Hud?"

"It's an acronym that stands for 'Heads-Up Display'. It's a digital display device that gives you a lot of information, and can be used for a lot of things," he explained. "I built a device that projects onto a collapsible glass screen to use for mechanical work, building things and stuff, but it can also scan and read blueprints to render three-dimensional models, as well as interpret languages and do mathematic problems. Really handy for repair work."

The blue-haired girl stared down at her food for a moment, her emotionless expression disguising her confusion. As the two ate in silence, Tails noticed Saito running through the field, clearly panicked. The Japanese boy noticed the two sitting at their table and rushed over, gesturing to Tails. "Hey Tails, can you come with me for a bit? I need some help."

Tails looked down at his food, then up at Tabitha. Understanding, Tabitha subtly nodded. "Yeah, one sec," he said to Saito, quickly scarfing down as much of his food as he could handle before wiping his mouth on his napkin and turning to Tabitha. "Just leave everything out, I'll pick it all up when I get back." He hopped out of his seat and took off after Saito, who had already made it out the main gate. He kicked his jet shoes into life with a press of a button on his wristcomm, quickly closing the distance to the boy as he skated along.

"Thanks for coming," Saito said as Tails caught up, a note of relief in his voice. "I'm not sure what we're getting into, but she needs our help."

"She?" Tails asked. "Who are you talking about?"

"There's this maid girl named Siesta that has been pretty nice to me. Some noble took her to be a… a concubine, I think. Most likely against her will, but she can't do anything about it, with him being nobility. I plan to get her back."

"Eugh, probably some nasty old man," the fox said, cringing at the thought. "Yeah, I met Siesta earlier. She was really nice and offered to help with laundry so I could practice. So what's the plan? Are we going to try to negotiate her release, or…"

"I didn't even bring my sword," Saito replied. "I thought we could try to negotiate something."

"And do you even know where we're going?" Tails asked, shooting him a concerned look.

The boy shrugged. "Guiche gave me some vague directions. I think we can work it out."

"He better be right," Tails thought with a short sigh. He slowed down to match Saito's slower jogging pace, letting the boy save his energy for the long path ahead.


	12. Season 1 Chapter 12

Season 1 Chapter 12

Tails and Saito finally reached at the mansion after an hour of mixed jogging and running. Thoroughly winded, Saito took shelter against a stone perimeter wall to catch his breath and collect himself. Tails shut off his rocket shoes, dropping to the ground in a small cloud of dust.

"Damn, they never told us it was an hour's run from the academy!" Saito huffed.

"Yeah. Maybe I ought to make you a pair of these shoes," Tails replied with a slight grin, looking up into the night sky for the first stars to appear.

Suddenly, the main gate slid open, revealing a young guard carrying a pike and oil lantern. "Who goes there?!" the man called out, holding his lantern aloft to get a better view of the intruders. Despite the man's menacing figure in the yellow glow of his lamp, Tails could see he seemed hesitant to attack.

"Pardon us," Saito said, stepping forward with his hands up to let the guard see him. "We want to speak to Count Mott, if he's home."

The man looked back at the house for a moment, weighing his choices. "Very well. Come with me," he replied, waving for them to follow him. He lead them through the main gate to the front door of a large mansion, well-lit with hundreds of torches lining the wall of the building and the grounds around it. Two door guards waiting patiently at their post took the liberty of knocking on behalf of their guests, eyeing the fox and odd-looking teenager with scrutiny. After a short moment, a young maid answered the door, gesturing for the two guests to enter. Guided by the maid and accompanied by the two door guards, they made their way up the stairs in the central foyer to the second floor, stopping at the wooden door at the top. The guard announced the group's presence and opened the door, revealing a large office where a well-dressed man stood behind an ornate desk. Siesta, now dressed in a short-skirted red and white maid's dress, waited patiently in the corner with her head down for her next order.

The man took a seat in his chair and motioned Saito and Tails over to him, under watch of the guard. "I wondered what this nonsense was about!" he announced, watching the Mobian and the teenager with contempt. "I didn't recognize any such figures, and don't care to now, either. Be gone! You should be grateful I even allowed you in my presence, commoners!"

Suddenly, Saito gave the man a deep bow from the waist. "I beg of you! If you allow Siesta to return to the Academy, I'll do anything!" he blurted.

The man smiled "How are you two related? Surely you must be, if you care for her so much," he said in a smug tone, casting a glance over at Siesta.

"We're co-workers of a sort, sir. He was afraid of how you might mistreat her, given… rumors," Tails stated as politely as he could muster. He bent over to Saito and whispered in his ear "Saito, we're flanked by two armed guards. I could probably handle them, but probably the whole estate will be on us in a matter of seconds. If we can't get her now, we formulate a plan and come back."

"Right," Saito replied, giving Tails a reassuring grin.

"The servants of the Mott household are under my jurisdiction," Count Mott said, ignoring his guests' whispering. "A master treats his servants as he chooses, not at the whims and fancies of commoners."

"As I thought!" Saito exclaimed, standing straight once more, his hands balled into tight fists.

"So what? Commoners should consider serving under nobles a great honor!"

"You pig-faced bastard!" Saito yelled, running forward toward Count Mott. The guards quickly circled in front of Saito and crossed their pikes, blocking Saito's path. Rushing forward to grab Saito, Tails struggled to hold Saito back. "Remember the plan, bro!" Tails whispered in his ear, letting the boy go once he was calm enough.

Unable to contain herself, Siesta rushed forward and knelt before the Count's desk, her head bowed "Please forgive this man, Sir Count! They only had good intentions by it," she begged.

"I will not! I cannot forgive an insult from a commoner, of all people. Step aside, Siesta!" The Count ordered, growing furious at the level of insubordination he'd faced so far.

"I will not," she said, refusing to budge. "Count Mott, I beg of you, please let them go! I'll take any punishment that you desire."

"Very well," the man said with an ugly grin. "Boy, you said you'll do anything?" he began, turning to Saito. "If you want her returned, there is a task you can complete. I have grown fond of my library, and wish to add a rare specimen to my collection. It was summoned through magic by a Germanian sorcerer, who has kept it as a family treasure. Their daughter, of the Zerbst family, is enrolled at the Academy where you currently work. Bring me the book if you wish to see Siesta returned. Now be gone! I have work to attend to."

Saito seethed with rage as the guards gathered the two guests and escorted them outside, where they stood at the gate to ensure the duo's departure. The two began walking down the road toward the academy, silently contemplating Siesta's fate in the meantime.

"Well, that went rather smoothly," Tails remarked, rolling his eyes. "If Kirche has the book, all we have to do is steal it, right?"

"Yeah, I don't think it'll be too hard," Saito said, his emotions subsiding. "Kirche tried to seduce me with gems and stuff earlier, and offered me the book as a 'gift'. If I can just get into the same situation and accept the book, we should be in the clear," Saito replied.

Tails perked up at a distant noise, what sounded like a galloping horse. After a moment, Saito also registered the noise, peering into the moonlit darkness. In the pale light, the two could make out a short figure riding a galloping horse directly toward them. "Saito! Tails!" they could hear Louise's familiar voice call. "Get over here, you stupid dogs! We're headed back to the Academy."

"Alright," Tails replied. "Saito, you can get on the horse with Louise. I'll just get back on my own." While Saito struggled to mount the tall horse, Tails booted up his rocket shoes and took off, retracing the path back to the Academy as he skated along at full tilt.

* * *

In under five minutes, he was already sliding up to the door in a cloud of dust, coming to a running halt as he shut down his rocket shoes.

Walking around the campus to the blue-roofed dorm tower, he began to make his way up to Tabitha's room, remembering that it was Tabitha's night tonight. Inside her room on the fourth floor, Tabitha was waiting, reading a book in bed by lamplight. A small folded blanket bedding was set up for Tails on the floor at the foot of Tabitha's bed.

"Sorry I'm late. Saito had a bit of an issue, but it looks like he'll get it worked out." Tails stated, letting out a yawn.

Tabitha nodded and set down her book, letting the fox find his way across the room and lie down before setting aside her glasses and blowing out the lamp at her bedside.

Stretching out over his makeshift bed and kicking off his shoes, Tails gazed at the wooden ceiling illuminated by the moonlight that filtered through the thin curtain stretched over the room's only window. "I wonder how Saito's going with getting the book," he thought. "Hopefully he didn't get too caught up with Kirche, or he's gonna be in some deep trouble with Louise."

Laying on the pile of folded quilts, he silently traced the larger grains and patterns in the ceiling boards for several minutes in an attempt to bore himself to sleep, but a new, soft sniffling sound caught his attention. He powered up his T-Buster and built up a low charge, bathing the room in a soft yellow light only to shut it off again after finding no intruders. He silently tiptoed over to Tabitha, noticing her restlessness as she tossed and turned in bed in the pale moonlight that filtered through the thin curtain over her window.

"Mother! Don't! You shouldn't drink it! Mother!" Tabitha mumbled in her sleep, her voice becoming more and more frantic as she repeated herself like a broken record. Smoothing the sheets, Tails took a seat on the side of the bed and took off his gloves, brushing the cold sweat off her forehead with his fur-coated hand. "Come on, Tabitha. Don't worry, everything's gonna be fine," he whispered, brushing her eyes free of tears with his finger. Tabitha leaned up against one of his tails like a warm pillow, her sleep-talking subsiding as Tails continued to whisper, lulling her with reassuring words. Once Tabitha was stable and quiet, Tails stood up and returned to his bed, only to return as Tabitha slowly started up again. This time, he laid back on the bed with her, letting her head rest on his shoulder as her mumbling subsided.

"I guess things never change," he thought, his gaze returning to the dimly lit ceiling. "I remember when Cosmo used to sleeptalk about her mother, too. I wonder if Tabitha lost her mom…" Soon enough, Tails drifted into sleep, laid out on top of the bed next to Tabitha.

* * *

An hour or so later, he was rustled awake by Tabitha as she clambered over Tails to look out the window. Tails quickly rolled out of bed and began profusely apologizing, but noticed Tabitha's attention was fixed on a horse rider outside. "If that's Saito, good on him," he thought, rubbing his eyes.

Tabitha quickly turned to her dresser and began to un-dress, spurring Tails to look away. When she finished re-dressing in a fresh school outfit and had picked up her staff, Tails slipped on his gloves and walked over to his bed, stuffing his feet into his shoes. Scrambling after Tabitha, he noticed she had left his new sword next to the doorframe and grabbed it as he left, following the short blue-haired girl over to Kirche's and Louise's tower. With Kirche living on a lower floor than Louise, they stopped to collect the sleepy redhead on the way to Louise's room.

Reaching her room, Kirche began to knock continuously, until an angry, groggy Louise was summoned. "What is it? At this hour?" she snapped, giving the redhead girl an electric stare.

"Yeah, your familiar sort of just ran away again," Kirche replied, yawning and giving a casual shrug. "He took the nice sword I bought him and stormed out of my room."

"WHAT?!" Louise yelled, her eyes flying wide. "First off, what was he doing in your room?! Second... shit! He took the sword!" she exclaimed, running her hands through her hair in her moment of stress. Suddenly, she paused, weighing the pros and cons of the situation. "If he's headed back to that noble's place, I won't need to kill him, at least…" she muttered.

"Yeah, if he draws his sword, he's dead," Kirche agreed. "He was after a family treasure of mine, but refused the terms I set for him. I think the Count wants it?"

Louise nodded. "Let me get dressed while you go grab that book. If we get that dog out of this, I'm going to flay him alive," she grumbled, slamming her door shut. Tails could hear her scream in frustration through the heavy wooden door and chuckled a little to himself, thinking of all the explaining Saito would have to do. While Kirche ran back to her room to grab the book, he and Tabitha waited for several minutes until Louise re-emerged, dressed and ready to go.

Louise stormed down the stairs with Tabitha and Tails closely behind, intercepting Kirche in the stairs and blasting past her as the pink-haired girl rushed out of the tower. Tabitha whistled for Sylphid as they ran, watching the night sky to see which direction the dragon would approach from.  
"Hey guys, I'm gonna run ahead," Tails said, bringing his rocket shoes to life with his wristcomm. "Perhaps I can beat Saito there and stop him." With a quick nod of confirmation from Louise, he took off, blazing across the landscape at full tilt.

Despite shaving off a solid thirty seconds from the trip, Saito was already inside and was bearing a sword when Tails slammed his way through the door. The two door guards were advancing on Saito from behind, but Tails managed to intervene, swinging his curved sword and knocking the guards over the head with the flat of the blade's tip, knocking them out. Switching his sword to his left hand, he brought up his T-Buster in his right and began building a high-voltage charge, bathing the room in a yellow light.

The Count had knocked down Saito with a magic blast of water while Tails had dealt with the guards, and had began to prepare another spell. He levelled his wand at Saito and chanted three words, sending razor-sharp icicles spewing forth from the tip of his wand toward the downed boy. Tails skated sideways into the path of the icicles, his gaze fixed on the foremost icy blade that flew his way. Just as he'd predicted, the blue energy shield he'd seen before coated the front of his body in the blink of an eye, shattering the icicles on impact. The Count, stunned at the sudden turn of events, was barely able to start another spell before Tails raised his T-Buster, intimidating the man with the glowing red machine.

"Put the wand down, old man, or I'll shoot!" Tails called over the crackle of stored electricity. Stricken with fear, the fox's words and the blinding light of the T-Buster convinced the Count to drop to his knees. "Our friends are coming with the book."

"…I will wait," Count Mott said, tones of anger and defeat in his voice. Tails shut down his T-Buster, dissipating the charge on the T-Buster and returning it to hammerspace. As if sensing that he was no longer in danger, Tails' blue shield also blinked out of existence, leaving him standing with only his sword.

Within minutes, Louise, Kirche, and Tabitha arrived on Sylphid's back. Louise gawked at the damage done, but wisely kept her mouth shut as they made their way past the unconscious guards and followed Count Mott to his office. The man took a seat behind his desk, huffing to himself and holding out his hand. "The book, please. Siesta doesn't walk free until I inspect it," he said, his pride creeping back into his voice.

Kirche stepped forward and handed the Count the book, sealed in a locked book cover, and a small key. The Count unlocked the book, flipping open to some middle page. As his eyes scanned the page, his jaw dropped as he giggled with delight like a little child. He dropped the lock cover, revealing a magazine with photos of naked women and some words written in Japanese on its' cover.

"It's a… porn magazine. And a pretty old one, too," Saito said, noting the frazzled edges of the cover and a date written in small font.

Tails cracked up, bending over coughing from laughing too hard. "Wow, of all things this guy could have wanted, he picked THIS," he managed, trying to catch a breath. Finally, he contained his chuckling and straightened up, his face serious once more. "Ok, back to business. Where's Siesta?"

"Fine, fine," the Count muttered, his eyes not leaving the magazine for a moment. He walked over to a door in the far-left corner of his office, unlocking it with a small key. Siesta burst out the moment he opened the door, rushing over to Saito and embracing him. Louise immediately reverted to her pissed-angry mode, seeing the two together.

"Come on guys, let's go home. Good dealing with you, Count Mott." Kirche said, turning to leave. The rest of the group followed, but not without Tails giving the Count a quick scare with his T-Buster before joining the others outside. group headed out and mounted Sylphid. Once everyone loaded up onto Sylphid and got airborne, Tails took off for the Academy on foot, ready to get a good night's sleep.


	13. Season 1 Chapter 13

SEASON 1 CHAPTER 13

After an eventful night, Tails was relatively well rested and ready for the day. Popping out from underneath his pile of quilts at the end of Tabitha's bed, he slipped on his shoes and gloves before giving his T-Buster and two swords a quick glance-over while he waited for the blue-haired girl to get dressed. Satisfied that his tools were ready for the competition, he followed Tabitha out of her room and down the stairs of the dorm tower. Outside, a construction crew was already well into setting up the stage for the day, setting out hundreds of chairs on either side of the path between the Academy's main door and front gate. In front of the Academy doors, a large, elevated wooden platform was set up. Lots of students were already up at the food buffet off to one side, assembling their morning's breakfast courtesy of Marteau and his staff of chefs.

"Wait here," Tabitha said, walking off to the tables of food to get in line. Minutes later, she returned with two plates loaded with omelets and potatoes, much to her classmates' complaint.

"Thanks," Tails replied, gratefully accepting the food. He promptly dug into the food, occasionally casting glances over at the students still in line. As he finished up his own plate, Tabitha handed her plate to him, the omelet and potatoes merely nibbled on. "You sure you don't want more than that?" he asked.

Tabitha shook her head and walked away, taking her seat in the front row. Shaking his head, Tails scarfed down half of the remaining omelet before taking the plates over to the table and setting them in a large bin, slowly filling with other dirty dishes.

Shortly after cleaning up after breakfast, Tabitha stood up and joined the students as they lined up on either side of the path, waiting patiently. In the distance, Tails could see a white carriage slowly approaching, accompanied by several armed guards on horses. "Must be someone pretty special for these guys to behave like this," he thought, stepping away from the path. As the carriage arrived, all of the students bowed in respect. Watching the carriage, he caught a short glimpse between the guards of a purple-haired girl in an ornate white dress, ranging somewhere near seventeen years old by his guess. She stepped out of her carriage, took a look around, and approached Headmaster Osmond at the front stage.

"Thank you for hosting such an event for me. I hope my presence will not disturb the competition," the purple-haired lady said.

"Of course not, Princess! It is an honor to have you here. I hope you will enjoy the event," Osmond replied. With a signal from the old headmaster, the students rapidly filed into the seats, with the princess in a personalized chair in the front row alongside her guards. Tails quickly vacated the area, joining Saito to the side of the stage among the other waiting familiars.

As Headmaster Osmond called out students' names, the students stepped up to the stage and began running their familiars through a variety of stunts and acts. Tails watched with fascination as the eclectic collection of species performed their feats, ranging from acrobatic stunts to mock speech to displays of power. Kirche's oversized lizard, Flame, did pyrotechnic stunts alongside its master, while Tabitha rode Sylphid in a dazzling acrobatic show high above the stage. When Louise was finally called to the stage, she called out Saito and Tails from backstage and waited for Kirche and Tabitha to join her on the platform. Professor Osmond also remained on stage, clearing his throat to make an announcement.

"Today, we have a special treat for you all," the old man began, gesturing toward Tails with his hand. "For the first time in school history, a single student has summoned multiple familiars, who, due to this unique nature, shares multiple masters! The yellow fox named Miles will be representing Mrs. Louise, Mrs. Tabitha, and Mrs. Kirche simultaneously, in a sparring event with Mrs. Louise's other familiar, Saito." Osmond guided Louise offstage once more, turning back to the two Familiars. "May the fight begin!"

Tails bowed to Saito, drawing his cheap sword and setting his nicer blade aside on the stage. Returning the bow, Saito drew his gem-coated blade he'd received from Kirche. As soon as the formalities were over, Saito immediately opened up with a quick rushing stab, which Tails caught with his hand-and-a-half at the hilt. The yellow Mobian deflected the blade off to the right, throwing Saito off balance, as he followed up with a quick jab of his own. Saito, under the influence of his rune powers however, was able to dodge with cat-like reflexes, sending him skidding to the other end of the stage. He took off with another dash, this time leading with an overhead swipe. Tails was able to dodge the blow, but was forced to block a roundabout swipe as Saito pivoted at the end of his charge. With an audible *click*, Tails' blade gave way and broke into two larger pieces under the force of the blow, sending him sprawling to the ground with nothing but the sword grip and a short stub of razor-sharp fractured metal in his hand. Saito quickly closed the distance, holding Tails at swordpoint.

"Big mistake," Tails thought with a grin. He quickly swept Saito's legs out from under him with his tails, rolling backwards into a standing stance. Capitalizing on Saito's fallen state, he followed up with a flying kick as the boy tried to stand up, assisting the kick with a burst of his rocket shoes. The blow sent Saito sprawling off the stage, tumbling in the grass a ways. Tails stood back up and fetched his new scimitar, sprinting over to Saito who was now standing but dazed by the heavy blow.

"Not bad, Saito," Tails remarked. "I'd expect at least a few broken ribs from that kick, but you shake it off like nothing."

Saito grinned, blood leaking from a small cut where he bit his lip in the tumble. "And you. I shoulda guessed you'd fight with your tails if I got too close. Ready?" Saito retorted, bringing his sword to fighting stance.

"You bet!" Tails replied. He dislodged the Power Ring from his blade, enveloping himself in the yellow aura with the Ring's power. With a sense of strength coursing through him, Tails pushed the offensive with a flurry of sword swipes, kicks and blows with his tails. Holding Saito on the defensive seemed easy; Tails countered Saito's rune-imbued strength with that of the Power Ring and his experience, remembering the warm summer days in Knothole he'd spent watching and occasionally sparring with Antoine with wooden swords to pass the time.

Eventually, he was able to pin Saito against a wall, knocking his sword out of his hands. The crowd gasped, but no applause rang out at Tails' victory. A quick rally of cries came from the crowd, drawing the two combatants' attention away from each other. High above, a horde of red dragons similar to Sylphid in appearance filled the skies above the Academy, spewing flames from their mouths as they dived toward the students. Tails watched, dumbstruck as several dragons focused on the guards surrounding the Princess, until one was able to swoop in and grab her while her knights were preoccupied. With the princess seized, the group retreated toward what appeared to be a large wooden sailing ship, floating in the distant sky.

"Shit, we gotta get after her!" Tails called, looking around. Realizing that Sylphid, the only other flying familiar nearby, was locked in combat already, he broke into a sprint, taking to the air with his tails. He crammed his scimitar into the broken sword's cheap sheath as best he could and engaged his T-Buster, removing a fresh Power Ring. Using it's energy to bolster his strength in addition to his rocket shoes, he accelerated as fast as his tails could carry him, leaving the Academy behind as he blazed across the sky.

Not too far away, a detachment of the dragon squad turned to engage Tails, but the fox was faster on the draw. Tails leveled his T-Buster and took several aimed shots at the oncoming dragons, the yellow bolts arcing through the air at incredible speed. The charged T-Buster pulses impacted the dragons in the chest and head, sending them plunging out of the air as their muscles gave in to the spasm-inducing taser pulses. In the distance, the dragon carrying the Princess had already boarded the wooden airship as it slowly began to accelerate. Tails pushed himself to the limit of the Power Ring's additional strength, barely able to overtake the ship as it reached cruising speed. With a final rush of the Power Ring's energy, Tails grasped the handrail of a rear balcony on the ship and pulled himself aboard, shutting off his rocket shoes.

"Barely made it!" he thought, taking a moment to catch his breath before turning to the locked balcony door. With a few quick cuts from the T-Buster's plasma cutter on the external hinges of the locked door, he kicked the door inward and rushed in, plasma cutter beam at the ready. Inside, a couple of negligent guards were staring open-mouthed at the intruder, seated at a card table with keg of alcohol and a couple of glasses.

"Hey, buddy," Tails growled, pointing the plasma beam at the closest guard. "Tell me where they're keeping the lady or I toss you both overboard."

"B-below deck, in the cells is my guess," one of the guards stuttered, raising his hands. "I didn't even know we had her yet, so I don't know what cell!"

"Right. Gimme directions. Otherwise I'm just going to start punching holes in the ship until I find it," Tails said, swinging the plasma cutter beam like a saber of golden light at the nearest object -- a lightly-stocked liquor cabinet near the balcony door. With a sudden crunch, the top half of the cabinet fell free, the glass doors shattering to dust as the ruined furniture fell to the floor.

"Outha door, take a right… *hic*… Dow the sterrs atta end otha hallway, two flerrs down," the other guard muttered, completely inebriated. "Stertn at tha-*hic*… flerr and two more flerrs dow aretha three flerrs of cells. Mostathem er stor… storage, thohh. Are ya… gonna kill us?"

Tails suppressed a laugh, watching the completely calm, intoxicated man practically fall out of his seat as he fumbled for some sort of weapon to defend himself with. Leaving the two guards behind, he turned and headed for the door, bolting for the stairs. After two short spirals of wooden stairs, he yanked open the door to what the guard described as the first layer of cells. Some guards were on standby as they patrolled the aisles of steel-barred doors, but he subdued them with quick stun blast from his arm cannon. He zipped up and down the rows of cells, seeing nothing but crates of food, kegs of alcohol, and cannon supplies locked up for safekeeping behind bars in every cell. Rushing back to the door, Tails ran back to the stairs, darting down to the next floor to start over.

This time, two guards were at the ready, guarding a door on the far end of the hall from the stairwell door and armed with their dragon-riding pikes. Tails nailed them both with his T-Buster, dropping them like a sack of bricks with a single shot each. Approaching the iron-strip-reinforced door, he switched over to his T-Buster's plasma function and cut it down, revealing a strategy room manned by a tactician behind a map and as many guards as could possibly fit into the room.

"Oh, you gotta be kidding me!" Tails groaned, turning to run with the guards in close pursuit. Firing blindly behind him as he ran, he managed to taze one before reaching the stairwell door, leaping down the stairs to the third cell floor. He slammed through the door, dropping a cross-bar lock on his way through. The guards were only moments behind, slamming the door with their pikes in an attempt to knock the door down.

"Who's there?" Tails heard a female voice call from somewhere among the cells.

"Hey! I'm here to get you back to the Academy. Keep talking so I can find you," Tails called back, taking off down the closest aisle.

"Oh, thank Bremir! And you are?" the Princess said, her voice growing louder as the fox ran. Tails rounded the corner on the far row of cells, next to the outer hull of the ship. He found the Princess lady seated on a solitary bench inside the cell at the end of the middle row, her face unwaveringly calm.

"Oh, it's the fox. I'm sorry, what was your name again? Miller, was it?" The Princess said.

"Miles Prower, although my friends call me Tails. Stay back for a second, ok?" Tails instructed, readying the plasma cutter beam once more. The focused yellow beam made short work of the heavy pig-iron bars, leaving behind molten metal tips where the beam had passed. Tails assisted the Princess through the hole, disengaging the plasma cutter to keep from burning her. With a loud crash, the guards finally managed to pound their way through the stairwell door down the aisle door, pouring into the corridor.

"You guys messed with the wrong fox," Tails growled, gritting his teeth. He unleashed a quick burst of full-power T-Buster shots at the closest of the oncoming soldiers, pushing off the ground with his tails to brace against the moderate recoil. The electricity arced among the closely-grouped soldier's plate armor, shocking the soldiers that weren't immediately killed and stunning them into unconsciousness. He then turned his attention to the wall that the outer hull of the ship was comprised of, cutting a large swath of the hull away with the plasma cutter function. Checking the slot in his T-Buster, he was dismayed to find that a fresh Power Ring hadn't fully regenerated yet. "This is gonna be rough, with no Power Ring. Hope the rocket shoes makes up for it," he thought.

Moments later, a dragon rider blasted past the hole on his mount, accompanied by the rest of the squadron. Tails looked over to the white-clad girl and walked over, scooping her up in his arms.

"You ready?" Tails asked with a grin.

"Ready? You mean we're-" The princess began, quickly subsiding to a short, panicked scream as Tails jumped out of the hole, tails and rockets on full throttle and T-Buster ready to engage. Suddenly, a dragon fell right past Tails, it's wings coated in ice. Tails looked up and saw Tabitha riding Sylphid, engaging five dragon riders while the others rushed to get airborne. Tails took to the air, taking a dragon out of the sky with a T-Buster pulse. However, Tabitha had quickly dealt with three of the four remaining attackers in front of her, leaving one dragon knight behind her.

"TABITHA! BEHIND YOU!" Tails yelled at the top of his lungs over the rushing wind, throwing unaimed hipfire from his T-Buster in the diving dragon's direction without any luck. The enemy rider's mount swooped down on Sylphid and slammed into her, flipping her over and attempting to bite at her neck. Without anything to hold onto, Tabitha was tossed by the sudden rotation and plummeted to the ground below. Tails stopped his twin tails, using his rocket shoes to maneuver himself as he fell after the blue-haired girl.

Stowing his T-Buster and shifting the Princess to his left hand as he came alongside Tabitha, he reached out and grabbed the blue-haired girl by the arm and dragged her in. Only a few hundred feet from the ground, he managed to wrap his arm around Tabitha's waist and brought his shoes and tails to full throttle in an attempt to slow down. However, in attempting to fully counter his downward momentum, he was unable to stop his forward momentum. He turned to face away from the ground and braced for impact, holding the Princess and Tabitha in front of him as he fell. The blue shield flickered into existence around all three of them as they skidded along the ground, carving a large rut in the ground until finally slamming into a large tree and coming to a halt. Sylphid plummeted to the ground in the distance, now on top of the slightly smaller red dragon, it's rider locked into his saddle below the two.

"Ugh…You two ok?" Tails asked, massaging his head that had been thoroughly shaken in the rough landing. Both girls responded with a silent nod, looking over themselves with fascination. The fox checked his T-Buster's Power Ring storage, his eyes greeted by the signature golden glow of a fresh Power Ring.

"Great, NOW it shows up…" Tails thought, rolling his eyes.

"Miles, are you hurt?" the Princess asked, looking over the uninjured Mobian with fascination .

Tails shook his head. "No, I'm fine. Let's go collect Sylphid. I doubt that dragon she flipped survived the impact, but hopefully she's ok," he said.

* * *

 

The trio made their way through the woods to where Sylphid had landed, greeted by the scene of the blue dragon's brutal victory. Crimson blood stained the grass around the red dragon where it lay, with nothing but a crushed helmet full of ugly red matter to show of the dead rider. The red dragon was also motionless, its' throat shredded to tatters and its' neck bent at an odd angle. Behind her kill, Sylphid sat on her haunches, licking at a wound on her stomach with her scaley pink tongue still dripping with blood.

"Sylphid! Thank god you're alright," Tails said, still grimacing at the nasty scene in front of them. "I was worried about you back there, when I saw you get flipped and lose Tabitha. Great job handling the dragon. I was worried it would still be you on the bottom."

Tabitha walked over to her familiar and raised her staff, chanting softly in an unintelligible language. A small ball of water condensed out of the air and floated over to the cuts on Sylphid's stomach and shoulders, glowing with light for a moment. As Tabitha finished the chant, blue glow dissipated, revealing Sylphid's blue and tan scales where the gashes had healed.

"Well, I suppose we should head back to the castle, the guards are probably worried about you, Princess," Tails said, breaking the silence. "Should we let Sylphid rest? How are you feeling, Sylphid?"

Sylphid replied with a couple groaning noises, pointing with a talon-tipped paw toward her chest.

"Broken rib?" Tails asked. Sylphid nodded in response.

"Don't ride Sylphid," Tabitha said, tending to Sylphid's cuts.

"Alright, well, I can either fly you guys back if you need to be back there fast, or we can walk. Sylphid, can you walk or fly alongside?" Tails asked. Sylphid responded with a nod and a reassuring rumble from deep in her throat. "Well, then if we're all good, let's get back to the Academy."

Sylphid rose to her feet, stomping over to Tails and giving him a face-enveloping lick. Laughing, Tails patted the blue dragon on the head and turned to catch up with the Princess and Tabitha as they made their way back to the Academy.


	14. Season 1 Chapter 14

SEASON 1 CHAPTER 14:

Many of the students remained out on the green after the attack, assisting the Princess' guards in removing the bodies of the fallen dragon riders. Thankfully, very few students had injuries severe enough to require immediate attention from the infirmary. Saito, Louise, and Kirche were among the students still outside, organizing the bodies of the slain attackers for a burial and waiting for the Princess' return. A few hours had passed, but there was still no sign of the two women and the Mobian.

"I wonder if they're ok? I didn't know Tails could fly on his own, much less catch up with an airship at full speed. Tabitha hasn't come back either…" Kirche said, notes of worry creeping into her voice.

"I'm sure Tabitha is fine," Louise said with confidence, waving off the notion of failure. "She has Sylphid, so she can always escape. It's the Princess that I'm worried about."

"There they are! On the road!" someone called. Everyone turned their attention to the road beyond the front gate, their eyes following three moving figures on the road as Sylphid circled overhead. The guards rushed out to the Princess, escorting her back into the Academy grounds as Tails and Tabitha followed close behind. Louise and Kirche approached Tails, followed by a large body of students. Not surprisingly, Louise was the first to open her mouth.

"Tails, what the hell were you thinking? You went off on your own versus an entire armed squadron of dragon knights and Bremir knows how many soldiers on the ship, with no backup, for hours! That was rude, dangerous, risky, un-"

"-deniably cool. Great job getting the princess back." Saito butted in, giving the fox a quick thumbs-up. Louise quickly turned on the boy and hauled him aside to give him an earful for cutting her off.

"And thanks for saving Tabitha," Kirche added over the din of the argument, watching Louise squabble with Saito on the side with a smile. "We were so busy fighting that I didn't even notice her disappear, so I figured something must have happened to her. We were worried when we didn't find either of you among the others."

"Oh… sorry to worry you," Tails apologized. "I only tried to stop them from getting away. Tabitha saved me, too. I don't think I could've gotten through all of those dragon knights with the Princess as well."

At this point, Headmaster Osmond, Professor Colbert and Professor Cheveruse had all made it down from Osmond's office to see what was going on. Tails' eyes lit up when he caught Professor Colbert's attention, pointing toward the shoes. "Professor Colbert! The rocket shoes worked great! Wouldn't have been able to do it without them!" he called to Colbert.

Professor Colbert nodded and smiled. "Great job, Miles," he called back as Tails jogged over to join the three adults. Headmaster Osmond and his two staff members approached the Princess, the entourage of knights surrounding her parting to let them through.  
"Princess, I have some important things to discuss with you, if time permits," Professor Osmond said, a slight note of worry in his voice. Nodding, the Princess followed the old white-haired man up to his office, leaving the teachers, students, and knights to finish cleaning up. Cooking staff scrambled to clean up the overturned food tables in hopes of preparing for lunch as soon as possible, swerving through the crowd of students as they slowly meandered back to class. Once the food and dragon riders' bodies were thoroughly disposed of in a line of graves outside the school, the students made for the dining hall to get first dibs on lunch.

"Tails, Saito, come on. Let's go get lunch, you two definitely earned it," Kirche said.

"Hey, it's my day today, so I decide what goes on!" Louise yelled. "But yes, today is special because of your success. Let's go, before the food is gone."

Louise led the group off to the dining hall, where they took a row of seats for themselves. Many students crowded around to sit by the two heroes, pelting them with questions.

"Saito, what did you do while I was gone? Everyone seems pretty excited about you, too," Tails asked.

"Yeah, he did an amazing job with the ground troops. Those bodies you saw us burying? A second group popped up to keep us busy while the airship retreated. Most of them were his doing. Not a scratch on him, too," Kirche replied, as Saito was too busy talking to other girls. Louise gave Saito's ear a solid yank, pulling him clean out of his chair.

"Just because you are famous doesn't mean I want you spending time with girls! They're nobles, you aren't. They distract you from your duties," Louise said, pissed as usual.

"Chill out, Louise. I'm just answering questions, not asking them on a date. Jeez," Saito said, rubbing his now beet-red ear…

* * *

 

Lunch went smoothly, with lots of praise from the students as they rotated seats until everyone had a chance to talk to the two heroes of the day. The students then went to afternoon classes, since there were no morning classes for the event. Breaking away from the group of students, Tails stepped outside, given that it was Louise's day and that she wouldn't let him into class because of it. He took a seat by a small tree near the kitchen sat outside, laying back and stretching out to take an afternoon nap. Hardly fifteen minutes into his nap, however Tails woke to the sound of someone calling his name. The Princess stood in front of him with her hands clasped together at her stomach, giving him a polite smile. "Miles, could you come with me for a moment, please?" she asked.

Tails leaped to his feet with the help of his tails, startling the purple-haired girl by his sudden reaction. "What's up? You looked worried," he asked.

"I have something I would like to discuss with you. Come with me," she replied, motioning for him to follow her. He followed the Princess to the front gate, where her ornate carriage waited with its' driver at the ready. Guards mounted on horses surrounded the carriage, bowing respectfully as the Princess stepped up into her ride. She motioned for Tails to join her as she took a seat on one of the plush, cushioned benches. As Tails stepped inside, the driver hopped down from his bench up front and shut the door, sealing the Princess and the Mobian inside. "You're not abducting me into your secret knight service, are you?" Tails asked, raising an eyebrow.

The Princess let out a short giggle, shaking her head. "No no, nothing of that sort. I have a mission for you and Saito, and your masters if you so choose," she explained, a tone of deadly seriousness in her voice as she leaned forward, as if to whisper in his ear. "During my discussion with Headmaster Osmond, I received word that a treasure was stolen from the Academy. Whether the attack was a true assault to capture me, or a diversion for the thief, is yet to be determined. The Staff of Destruction, the treasure in question is an artifact capable of great power, something that came into our possession about thirty years ago. I had it transferred to a vault here for safekeeping, which is magically guarded as well as monitored by a guard squadron permanently stationed here. However, my arrival caused some of the guards to be pulled from their posts for my defense, on orders of Osmond of course. This provided a thief we know as Fouquet a chance to steal the Staff. The thief has been spotted recently by villagers, due to the irrational theft of food and supplies. We believe him or her to be stashing said goods in the woods nearby, preparing for a long journey. We need you to recover the staff before Foquet escapes, or destroy it if recovery is out of the option."

Tails nodded. "Alright, sounds simple enough. Why can't a unit of guards be sent after him? Why all the secrecy?"

The Princess shook her head. "I fear that my council of advisors would blame me for the loss, given that my presence was both unnecessary for the competition, and an indirect cause of the theft. Every state has enemies within, as I am sure you understand," the Princess replied. "I heard from Saito you come from a rather rebellious line yourself, from where you come from, so I'm sure you understand," she added, teasingly.

"Heheh, I'm surprised he remembered that," Tails said, rolling his eyes and grinning. "Sure, I'll see if I can get Saito and the others to join me. The more, the merrier." "Damn, I'm gonna have to beat that story out of him now," he added in the back of his mind.

"Thank you so much for understanding!" the Princess replied, smiling briefly. "Please give Louise my regards, and tell her to drop by the castle sometime. Tell her I'm terribly sorry I had to miss her, but I have urgent matters to tend to at the castle with this new attack."

"Will do! Also, before I go, what is your name? Everyone's just referred to you as 'the Princess' or 'Her Highness' around me, and we didn't have time to formally exchange names on the ship."

"Henrietta de Tristain. And yours?"

"Miles Amadeus Prower, although my friends and almost everyone else just call me Tails. For obvious reasons, as you could imagine," Tails said, rustling his tails in demonstration.

"Very well, Tails. It was wonderful meeting you. Thank you so much for your help," Henrietta stated, taking his hand momentarily. "Oh, also, here are some sketches I had made from the villagers who have supposedly seen Fouquet." She withdrew a rolled piece of parchment with several scribblings on both sides from a small, well-hidden pocket in her dress, handing it to the fox. "I'm not sure how accurate they are, but it's a start. I've also had a map drawn to a small hut in the woods, which we suspect is where Foquet is storing her supplies. Give my regards to Louise, please!"

"Will do," he said, nodding. With that, Tails collected the papers Henrietta handed him, thanked her, and exited the carriage. He gently closed the door behind him and backtracked to his tree as the carriage departed, sitting down and taking a moment to study the paper. Memorizing the details of the map and the sketchy drawing, he laid back against the tree and drifted back into sleep, waiting for the girls to get out of class.


	15. Season 1 Chapter 15

SEASON 1 CHAPTER 15:

A gentle breeze crossed the green, ruffling Tails' fur and rousing him from his nap. It was already late evening, with the sun sinking toward the horizon somewhere behind the perimeter wall. Students were filtering their way out of the dorm towers after hours of after-class homework, hungry for dinner. Tails stood up and stretched his back before making his way over to the flow of students. Within a few minutes, he could spot Louise's bright pink hair through the crowd, followed by Kirche and Tabitha a few paces behind. "Hey, guys. I need to speak to you for a minute," he said, pulling the three girls aside.

"What is it?" Louise asked irritably. "Dinner's being served, and I'm starving."

"We got some orders from the Princess. We got ourselves a mission on her personal request. Top secret," he explained. Louise and Kirche perked up immediately at the mention of "Princess" and "Top Secret". Tails motioned for the girls to follow him as he walked off toward Professor Colbert's workshop.

Approaching the workshop, he pulled open the door and checked inside to ensure Professor Colbert wasn't home before holding the door open for the three girls. He took a seat on one of the many stools around the workshop, waiting for the others to take a seat before clearing his throat and beginning.

"Alright. Princess Henrietta took me into her carriage before she left earlier today to have a private chat while you guys were in class. Problem is, some powerful weapon being stored here at the Academy under protection was stolen while we were attacked, because guards were pulled away to protect her. She wants us to get it back before it gets into the wrong hands. She's keeping this secretive because she's afraid of the political backlash, as it'd be seen as her fault for coming here without reason, distracting the guards with her presence. If we get it back, everything is back to normal and nothing ever happened. If we screw up, it might be all her inside enemies need to start a coup. Her words, not mine. We need to either get it back, or at least destroy it if recovery isn't an option. Preferably, BEFORE word gets out. So far, only the Princess, the Professors, Headmaster Osmond, and us four know of the issue. You guys don't have to come, and if you don't, keep it quiet and spread false info if someone finds out. If you do, we start tomorrow morning. Cut class if you have to, I'm sure they'll understand. Louise, I'm definitely taking Saito with me if he's up for it, so don't even start complaining. Who's in?"

"No way I'm missing out on this! I'm in, for sure," Kirche exclaimed.

Tabitha nodded. "In."

"If it's for the Princess, I'm definitely on board," Louise replied.

"Great, that's what I expected," Tails said. "Also, Louise, the Princess told me to pass on her regards, and that she's sorry she missed you. She said to visit the palace sometime, keep her company I suppose. Urgent matters at the castle with the attack, so she had to run back."

The pink-haired girl smiled and looked at the ground, embarrassed as if the Princess had uttered them herself. "Thank you. I'll see if I can arrange a trip there sometime. It's a sight worth seeing before you get yourself killed doing stupid stunts like this."

"Alright, I'll look forward to it," Tails replied, nodding. "Anyways, that's all. I'll be outside at my table if you need me."

The girls slipped out of the room, heading off to the dining hall as Tails made his way to the kitchen. As he passed through the kitchen doorway, he caught sight of Marteau and locked eyes with him. Marteau nodded and pointed at a tray of prepared food on a cart, waiting to be wheeled out to the dining hall. Tails gave the man a thumbs-up and reached for a plate on the cart, snatching a serving platter of salad with shredded chicken and fruit mixed in. He delved into a drawer on his way out and collected a set of silverware and a napkin before heading back out, making his way across the Academy grounds to his dining table.

"Crazy day today. Almost reminds me of the few times Aunt Sally got kidnapped, but way less high-tech," he thought as he set into his salad. A cool breeze swept across the grassy field, filling the air with the sound of rustling grass. "I'm surprised no one wants to sit out here. It's so nice in the evening."

For an hour, Tails sat and enjoyed the evening as he munched on his dinner, watching the shadow of the Academy's perimeter wall grow longer and longer as the sun finally dipped below the horizon. Just as he was finishing up his salad, he heard someone grunting and muttering to themselves behind him. He turned around, noticing Saito rolling a horribly large pot out toward him. "Uhh, Saito, what are you doing?" he asked.

Saito looked up from his work and shot Tails a little grin. "The kitchen threw it out, because it was too much of a pain to clean. I'm turning it into a Japanese outdoor soaking bath, since it's so big. Can you give me a hand? I was thinking against the wall by the bushes over by the tower there, so it won't be in the way."

"Sure." Tails hopped up from his seat and walked over to the pot, placing his hands against the rounded stone surface. With a hard, combined shove between the two, the pot began to pick up speed, rumbling across the soft grass.

"Say, can I try using one of those ring things you use?" Saito asked between breaths.

"Sorry, as far as I know, only Mobians can use them naturally," Tails replied. "You would need a piece of equipment built to use the Power Rings as an energy source for them to be any benefit to a human. Found that out back with Chris on Earth, back in Central."

"Oh. Where's Central? I don't know of any town named that."

"You know, Central? Near the President's office?"

"Oh, you mean Washington, D.C. That's the capital of the USA, at least. My parents visited there once, before I was born."

"No, it wasn't called that. Just Central. Perhaps… there's more than one "Earth", and the one I visited isn't the same? Could be positionally synchronized across dimensions. An interesting thought."

With a final heave, the gargantuan pot reached its final resting place. "So, what next?" Tails asked.

Saito wiped his forehead with the back of his jacket sleeve. "Well, we need to dig a pit for the fire, and we'll need to carry the water over here. So we need a couple of buckets and a shovel, and some wood for the fire."

"Well, the kitchen would have the buckets, but I'm not sure about the shovel," Tails said, rubbing the back of his head. "Maybe you could ask Marteau to see if he would know who would have a shovel? I'll go cut some wood and bring it back here."

Saito nodded and walked off toward the kitchen. "I'll probably need some stones to make the fire, too," Tails thought as he jogged over to the perimeter wall, jumping the wall with a quick burst from his tails. He booted up his rocket shoes and skated across the darkening landscape, reaching the edge of the forest in no time. He selected a small, already dead tree and cut it down with a single quick swipe of his T-Buster's plasma cutter, extinguishing the wood as it flared up with handfuls of dirt. Struggling to gain a firm grip on the fallen tree, he slowly skated back across the field with his shoes at full power to support the extra load.

As he skated through the main gate of the Academy, Tails spotted Saito making his way to the tub from the kitchen with a shovel, a couple of buckets, and a pair of towels in hand. "Turns out the kitchen already had a shovel for digging compost pits," he called as Tails skated past, dropping the dead tree next to the sideways pot. Saito arrived at the pot moments later and began to dig a pit and connecting trench next to the pot, tossing aside the dirt into a little pile while Tails de-twigged the tree. When Saito finished up with his work, Tails set about slicing up the tree into manageable logs, handing the pieces of burning wood to Saito to stick them flaming-face down in the dirt to extinguish them.

As a nice log arrangement finally took shape, Saito set aside the spare logs and lowered the pot over the pit, leaving the small connected trench exposed to supply the impending fire with air. The two began to fetch some water with the buckets, slowly filling the pot from the kitchen well bucket by bucket until the water level reached a few inches below the pot's rim. Tails brought up his T-Buster's plasma cutter once more and reached into the small trench to ignite the fireplace. Within a half hour of tending the fire, the water was plenty warm and letting off a gentle steam.

Tails looked away as Saito took off his clothes, slipping into the hot water gingerly. "Ahh… That's what I've been waiting for!" he sighed. He reached down into the grass at the edge of the tub and withdrew a small hand towel. Tails watched with interest as the boy dipped the towel in the water and wrung it out, then spun it violently to cool it off before folding it up and placing it on his forehead. Seeing that there was still a fair bit of room, Tails kicked off his shoes and slipped into the water, peeling off his gloves and tossing them next to his shoes.

"Reminds me so much of home," Saito remarked as he gazed upward, watching for the early stars to pop out. "We had a local public sauna we used to use where they had old style baths like these."

"Yeah. I'm just grateful to be able to clean up some. Fur gets nasty if you don't keep it clean. Makes life miserable," Tails replied, taking a moment to scrub himself with his hands to loosen up the dirt that had worked its' way down to his skin. "Probably gonna be using this more often if you don't mind."

"Not at all, just remember to refresh the water."

The two boys sat in silence for a while, occasionally hopping out to add more logs to the fire underneath the pot. Just as Tails hopped back into the water, he noticed a figure approaching through the steam.

"Hi, Mr. Saito and Mr. Miles. What's this?" He heard a girl ask, recognizing Siesta's voice.

"Oh, hey Siesta," Saito replied. "It's a bath. Like what I used to do back home."

"Interesting! Mind if I try?"

"Yeah sure, whenever you've got free time you're welcome to come an-WHAT THE?!?"

While Saito had been talking, Siesta began undressing on the spot, causing the two boys to look away in embarrassment. She slipped into the tub and took a seat next to Saito.

"Siesta, I meant by yourself, later! Louise is gonna kill me if she sees us, and god knows, she'll probably try to get you kicked out."

Siesta blushed, but stayed put. "I'm sorry if I embarrassed you. I just…."

Sensing a situation building up, Tails stood up and hopped out of the tub. "Well, I think this tub's a bit small for the three of us, so I'll be headed off now. Saito, thanks for letting me use it. See you two later." He picked up a towel and dried off his hands and head as best he could before picking up his shoes and gloves and making his way over to Louise's dorm tower. He set his shoes just inside the doorway to the dorm tower and stepped back out to the field, spinning his tails to flick out the water and blow-dry himself with the cool evening air. Once he was somewhat dry, he picked up his belongings and made his way up to Louise's room. The bedroom was empty, with two beds of hay made up against the wall. One had Saito's rusty sword sitting on it, while the other had Tails' scimitar.

"Hey Co-Partner. What's that sword?" he heard a voice growl from somewhere in the room. Tails looked around the room in a panic with his T-Buster at the ready, looking for the intruder.

"Over here, numbnuts. The straight sword," Tails heard the voice call again. He walked over to Saito's blade and withdrew it from its' sheath. "Hey, how are ya doin'? What's with the fancy blade?" the voice said, a small chunk of metal bolted to the sword's blade just above the handguard bouncing up and down. Tails dropped the blade out of surprise, rushing to pick it up once more. "Watch it, jerk. Don't be dropping me everywhere. I'm old and beat-up enoug as it is."

"Sorry, you just scared me for a sec," Tails apologized. "Who are you?"

"Derflinger. Gandalfr's partner. I know you're Waffenrüstung, but what's your name?"

"Tails."

"Yeah, no kiddin'. Seems like you got a few to spare. Anyways, the question. What's with the fancy blade over there?"

"Oh, it's a design from a different dimension I visited a while back. An ancient culture that died off well before I visited. I recreated one because I thought the design would work well for me," Tails explained, pulling the scimitar out of its' sheath to show Derflinger. "This slot I carved here in the back side of the tip can hold a Power Ring for easy access in combat. I had to have a curved blade to have a place to effectively put it, so the design made sense."

"Cool. What's a Power Ring do?"

Tails shrugged. "Lots of stuff, I guess. Mostly it provides a massive boost in energy that's helpful for combat." Tails set the two swords against the wall and pulled up his T-Buster, extracting a fresh Power Ring from the generator's storage slot and popping it into the scimitar's storage slot. "For me, I use it to fly faster. Sonic, a friend of mine, runs faster than the speed of sound, so he uses its energy to harden his body for devastating tackles that can punch through thick metal with ease. I also use it as a power source for my machines, since its power output can be regulated and it restores energy on its own as long as it isn't used up all at once. Handy little things."

"Can I see one for a bit? Put it around the handle or something."

Tails picked up Derflinger and set his handle inside the Power Ring mounted inside his scimitar.

"Oh yeah, I can feel a lot of energy coming outta it. What'cha say this was made out of?"

"I didn't say. It's a condensed form of Chaos Energy. Chaos Energy is a form of interdimensional energy that forms and binds universes together, both to itself and other dimensions. It's regulated by the Chaos Emeralds, back in my own dimension. They act as a conduit, where anyone with the right skills can tap into their power and become pretty much invincible, or power massive ships, such as my own."

"What kind of ships you talkin' about? These Emeralds make wind to power sailing ships or something?" Derflinger asked.

Tails laughed. "No no, MUCH more than that. We're talking about powering spaceships, levitating entire islands, destroying planets. You name it, they can do it. With the right tech, of course."

"Damn, sounds crazy. So these rings are just smaller Emeralds, if I'm understanding right?"

"Sorta kinda?" Tails said, gesturing with his hand. "You can make more Power Rings by taking existing rings and slowly drawing off their power to make new ones, as they regenerate over time if you don't run them dry. That's how my T-Buster works to generate new rings. The first ones were created by Chaos Emeralds, and they basically spawned new ones every time they came into close proximity. I'm surprised you said you could feel the power of the Ring. As far as I know, only Mobians could use them without technology, but if you can feel it, you can use it. We'll just have to figure out how."

"Now THAT's cool. What can I look forward to?"

"I dunno. What can you already do?"

"Absorb magic, teleport Gandalfr to safety, and switch to new weapons if this body gets broken. And cut shit, obviously."

"My guess would be increased teleport range, or maybe increased durability. Maybe some power will be transferred to Saito for increased strength? I dunno, it really varies."

Suddenly, the door slammed open, revealing Louise dragging Saito by the ear. "Saito, you dog! I ought to beat you for that!" she yelled to herself, tossing the boy aside with uncanny strength.

"Hey, it wasn't my fault!" Saito exclaimed. "Siesta wanted to try the tub, simple as that. We didn't do anyth-"

While Saito was talking, Louise had reached into her dresser and withdrawn a brand-new riding crop, the leather tab at the tip freshly cut. She smacked the crop against her palm, cutting Saito short in his pleas. "A dog needs to be taught properly…" she muttered, advancing on Saito. As she lunged in for the first swing of the crop, Saito sidestepped her blow, frantically backpedaling across the room to her bed. "Sit still and take your punishment, you idiot!" the pink-haired girl cried.

Tails sat back against the wall with Derflinger in his lap, laughing at the scene that unfolded before him as Saito struggled to dodge Louise's swipes. "HAHAHahah! Come on, Saito, use those dodges we worked on!" he chuckled.

"Louise-" Saito cried, being cut short by a harsh blow to the face fro the crop. "OWOWOWOwo stop! Tails was there too!"

Suddenly, Louise turned on Tails with a fire in her eyes, causing every hair on Tails' body to stand on end. "Ttt-Tails. Even you, the 'c-civil familiar'?" she stuttered in her rage. "I'll punish you BOTH!"

"Saito, run!" Tails yelled, leaping to his feet as Louise approached. The pink-haired girl leaped across the room, reaching out to smash Tails in the head with a vicious overhead swing with the crop. Tails pushed off the wall with his tails, dodging Louise's blow and launching himself toward the door. He took off down the hall, rushing past Saito for the spiral staircase. Throwing himself at the stairs, he jumped up onto the handrail and slid the rails down like he'd practiced with Sonic, reaching the bottom of the tower in great time.

"TAAAIIIILLLS! I'M TAKING AWAY YOUR RATIONS FOR A MONTH IF YOU DON'T COME BACK!" He could hear Louise scream down the stairs. He stopped at the entrance to the tower, ducking into a row of bushes that lined the tower wall outside. "Good luck finding me, though," he thought.

Moments later, Tails watched through the bush as Saito darted out of the tower's entrance with Louise hot on his heels, her cloak fluttering in the wind as she ran. "Well, they'll be at it for a while. She'll probably check Tabitha and Kirche's rooms after she catches Saito, so I might as well stay here," he thought. Stretching out on the packed dirt and grass, he tucked one of his tails up underneath his head and laid back, watching the stars through the edge of the bushes until he drifted into sleep.


	16. Season 1 Chapter 16

CHAPTER 16:

Despite camping out in a bush for the night, Tails woke up relatively well rested. He let out a loud yawn, dusted himself off and did some quick stretches to help with the soreness of sleeping on hard dirt all night, then made his way over to the kitchen. Once inside the bustling kitchen, he plucked a few apples from a bin and made his way over to Marteau, showing him the fruit. "This is all I'm taking today, Marteau. I'm keeping a running tab of everything, so I'll ask Kirche to pay for it later.

"Alright. Thanks for letting me know," Marteau said, nodding appreciatively. "JOHN! WRITE DOWN THAT MILES HERE TOOK TWO RED APPLES, PLEASE!" he belted across the room, over the din of cooking and cleaning. "Yeah, boss!" came a reply.

"Thanks!" Tails said. With that, he made his way for the door. He took a huge bite out of the first apple, savoring the crisp freshness of it. "I swear they use magic to make these better than I remember," he thought aloud, devouring the rest of the fruit. Finished with his short breakfast, he made his way to the classrooms, where he found Professor Colbert and Professor Cheveruse preparing for the day's lesson.

"Professor Colbert, I have a favor to ask," Tails announced. "Do you mind if Louise, Tabitha, and Kirche miss class today? I asked them for help with a very urgent private matter, and it would most likely result in them missing the entirety of morning class, as well as lunch and part of evening studies."

"It depends. Does Headmaster Osmond know?" Professor Colbert replied.

"Well… I'm not sure, but he doesn't, I'm sure he'd understand. It's very important."

Professor Cheveruse shook her head. "We can't let them out of our room unless they are sick and registered in their dorm, on a field trip, or under care of their own family for a time. Otherwise, we must have explicit permission of the Headmaster. Sorry, Miles."

Tails shrugged. "Alright, fine. It's orders from the Princess that they help me. They have to come with me today. Sorry," he stated matter-of-factly.

Professor Colbert gave the young fox a look of suspicion. "Miles, is this what I think it is? Are you going after Fouquet?" Professor Colbert asked, a note of concern in his voice.

"You betcha, Professor," Tails replied, giving the bald man a thumbs-up. "Princess Henrietta asked personally that we go get her, quietly, before things break down. She's pretty worried about this whole thing, so we've gotta move fast. Sorry to be rude, but I gotta juice. Thanks for understanding!" Tails said, not giving the two adults a chance to respond. He turned to dash out of the door, flying down the hallways and stairs to the main gate.

Just as he'd asked of them, Kirche, Saito, Louise, and Tabitha were all waiting at the main gate. Saito had Derflinger strapped over his back and held Tails' scimitar and the papers the Princess had given him.

"Alright guys, let's get moving," Tails declared a little too excitedly. "We have a map to a hut where Fouquet is supposedly hiding the Staff, so we need to get a move on before she gets wind of us coming and moves it. Tabitha, can you call Sylphid?"

Tabitha nodded and let out a sharp whistle with her fingers. In the distance, Sylphid rose out of the forest and flew over, dropping to the ground rather hard with a loud *thud*. Tails took the papers and his sword from Saito and briefly looked over the map before handing it to Tabitha. "Alright. That's what the Princess gave me. If you can get us there, we can land a short ways out and head in on foot from there. Does anyone know anything about this person? Surely there's some rumors if the Princess and the professors knew this person's name. Derflinger, you got anything?"

Derflinger slid a few inches out of his sheath on Saito's back, poking up over the boy's right shoulder. "Rusting away in a back-alley weapon shop doesn't exactly make me a gossip magnet. I got nothin'."

Everyone but Tails and Tabitha, too busy studying the map to notice, looked over in surprise. "What the hell? It can talk?" Saito exclaimed.

Derflinger sighed. "Tails, I thought you were gonna introduce me so I DON'T give people heart attacks. But yes, thank you for finally noticing the obvious," he said. "and I'm a HE, not an IT. The name's Derflinger, partner."

"He's your talking sword, safety mechanism, and sass-master extraordinaire I guess," Tails explained with a shrug. "Anyways, with that out of the way, we've got work to do. Let's get going." Everyone slowly boarded Sylphid, taking their sweet time to get comfortable, much to Tails' chagrin. When everyone was seated, Sylphid leaped into the air and took off, slowly approaching a suitable cruising speed and altitude with her heavy passenger load as they headed for the woods.

* * *

 

The group flew for about a half hour above the lush forests, moving from farm to hamlet until they reached their destination on the map. Just as the crude map suggested, a small shack was visible from the air, seated in the center of an overgrown man-made clearing, without any paths leading to or from the nearest town. They landed in a small break in the trees a short ways away and dismounted, hiking in the direction of the cabin.

Tails could feel the adrenaline kick in as the group approached the decrepit-looking building, ready for a fight. He brought up his T-Buster and built up a low chargee as he proceeded across the field ahead of the girls with Saito at his side, scanning for attackers. Surprisingly, nothing happened as the group approached the cabin. He motioned to the door, then ran up and put his ear to it. Satisfied that nothing was making noise inside, he waved for Saito to come join him. Saito ran up and yanked the door open, charging in with Derflinger at the ready.

"It's all good!" Saito called out moments later, dispelling the tension in the air.

Tails let out a short sigh. "Good. We should probably let the girls search for it, so that we can be ready to fight if Fouquet comes back," he called into the hut, turning back to the woods to wave the three girls over. He then retreated to the treeline of the hut's clearing, ready for an ambush on the cabin.

After about five minutes, Kirche stepped out of the shadowy building, shaking her head. "Nothing here! Just an old charcoal-maker's cabin. Lots of junk here. Nothing that looks recently stolen, much less moved in the past five years," she declared. Kirche began to walk back to the group in the treeline, when Tabitha walked out with a large purple box, lined with ornate gold framing, cradled in her arms.

"Found it," Tabitha quietly stated.

Suddenly, the ground shook violently, causing birds in the trees to take to the sky. A massive bulge in the ground formed not too far from the cabin, breaking the grassy sod. Out of the mound, a massive, human-like shape made of dirt and boulders that stood some two stories tall burst out of the ground, complete with mossy stones for eyes. On its' shoulder, A heavily-robed green-haired character stood, clinging to the side of the stone beast's head with one hand for support.

"There you are! I'll be taking that back, now," the lady called. Rushing in blindly, Saito bolted out of the treeline with Derflinger at the ready. Tails noticed as Saito's runes lit up with a bright blue glow, Derflinger's blade took on the same mystic light. With a bright flash, Derflinger had transformed from a rusty, chipped blade to a fresh, dark grey sword with a golden brass hilt.

With a fierce battle cry, Saito charged at the creature's legs the legs, hacking clean through one with superhuman-like strength. However, as quickly as the damage was done, masses of dirt and rock flowed out of the ground to replace the lost limb almost instantly. By now, Tails had darted out of the treeline, ready to engage Fouquet and the beast he rode.

"You can't stop me with something as puny as a sword! Give me the staff!" Fouquet demanded. The golem reached down to Tabitha with its massive arm to grab her, but she was much faster on the draw. Tabitha held out her staff in one hand, and without a single chanted word, condensed an icicle larger than the door she stood next to and sent it crashing into the golem's palm, splitting the arm right up the middle from palm to shoulder. The golem recoiled from the blow, but followed up with a sweep of its' foot in an attempt to repel the students while its arm regenerated.

This time, Tails was the fastest to move. His shield blinked into existence as a blue wall in front of him as he leaped forward, catching the foot and bringing it to a dead stop with his shield bearing the brunt of the weight. As the golem backed off to regain an attacking position, Kirche followed up with a sweeping flame-throwing spell from her wand.

Despite the intense blaze, the golem seemed unfazed, with the green-clad lady ducking behind the golem's head to avoid the flames. Louise saw her chance and took the box from Tabitha, flipping open the latches and withdrawing the Staff of Destruction. She pointed the olive-green cylinder at the stone golem, chanting a spell she remembered from a defensive magic class during her first year at the Academy.

"Louise, give it to me! You can't use magic right, anyways!" Kirche called, looking away from the stream of fire that spewed from her wand's tip.

"No! I can do this!" Louise angrily responded, determined to produce results as she flailed the Staff around helplessly.

Tails looked over at the two bickering women, his eyes flying wide at the sight of the Staff. "That isn't a wand..." he thought, taking in the details of the green device. He looked over at Saito and saw that the Japanese boy was thinking the same thing.

"Louise, toss it to me! It's not a magic staff!" Saito called, standing behind the golem. Louise lobbed the staff to Saito between the golem's legs, falling a bit short as Saito dived to catch it. He yanked a pin out of the back and removed the front and rear covers, extending the M72 LAW rocket launcher to its' full length. Peering through the front and rear lenses as he struggled to attain a sight picture and undo the safety, he dropped down to one knee and called to Tails. "TAILS! Get your shield on them, NOW!"

In a panicked sprint, Tails dashed over to the girls, tackling them to the ground as his shield flickered around the four of them. Saito depressed a button on the metal tube, launching the rocket at the golem in a burst of wispy bluish-grey smoke. The warhead connected with the golem's upper chest, ripping through the soft dirt and stone and blasting it to pieces, scattering it across the forest for a hundred yards. As the dust cleared from the collapsing remains, Tails pulled the three girls up and brushed himself clear of the rubble. Saito dropped the launcher and ran over to the group.

"You guys ok?" Saito asked

"Yeah. Almost got hit in the head with some rock, if it weren't for the shield. Thanks, you two," Kirche said.

"Not so fast, runts," a voice called. The group turned to face the green-haired lady, obscured by the settling dust from the launch. Fouquet walked out of the dust, holding the rocket launcher at the ready. "Thank you for showing me how to use the Staff. It was a pleasure knowing you all," Fouquet said, mockingly. She depressed the fire button, only to be greeted by a muted click. Dread spread across her face as Saito took the opportunity to rush her, catching her in the gut with the blunt back side of Derflinger's blade.  
"Sorry, but unfortunately for you, it's a single-use weapon from my world. I hope you like jail, Fouquet," Saito said, as Fouquet slipped into unconsciousness from the blow.

"Great job, Saito," Tails said, giving him a thumbs-up. "Let's head home. I'm sure Headmaster Osmond will be glad to be writing a letter to the Princess about this. We can tie up Fouquet and hand her to the Academy staff until she can be shipped to jail."

Saito sheathed Derflinger and shouldered Fouquet, walking off with the girls. Not willing to pass up free tech, Tails ran over and picked up the empty M72 tube. "Professor Colbert will probably want it. If he doesn't, I might be able to take it back and make more based on the launch mechanism," he thought. He ran to catch up with the group, who had boarded Sylphid and were ready to take off.

"Well, that went smoother than expected," Tails stated, his statement greeted by resounding agreement. With that, the group took off, headed for home.


	17. Season 1 Chapter 17

SEASON 1 CHAPTER 17:

Headmaster Osmond was displeased. Not only had some of his students gone out to hunt a dangerous criminal, his favorite sexy accountant turned out to be the notorious thief Fouquet! He was very pissed, but also very glad that the students had returned safely.  
"You all did a very great service to us for catching Fouquet. I will write to the Princess immediately," the old man conceded, hiding his frustration. "I am sure she will want to have an audience with you three for your deeds. Also, you successfully recovered the Staff of Destruction, which warrants a reward in itself."

"Well, sorta recovered it," Tails replied, holding up the empty tube and pointing to where the rocket once sat. "It's a single-use weapon, and it was used to defeat Fouquet, so it's pretty useless now. With some time and more advanced tools, I might be able to build more of them, or at least restore this one to functionality. However, it would take a very long time without the tools I need. The tools would take a while to build by themselves, so I don't think it's worth the time. If its' possible, I'd like to ask if I could keep it as a future project."

Headmaster Osmond nodded "Very well. If it is spent, it is of no use to us. I am sure the Princess wouldn't mind, for the services you have done her," he said, watching with mild interest as Tails re-collapsed the empty tube. "Anyways, since you skipped classes today, Professor Colbert is going to be giving you make up lessons in person, as he feels that material covered in class today is crucial for upcoming finals. He will be in the lecture hall after lunch. You are all dismissed. Have a good day."

As the group turned leave, the old man interrupted again. "I almost forgot. The Princess gave me instructions to send you to the castle when you have completed the mission. You leave tomorrow. That is all," he added.

Noding, the girls turned and left the room, followed by Tails and Saito as they began their trek down the tower. Louise and Kirche were sullen at the thought of make-up classes, the pink-haired girl's near-permanent scowl even more prominent.

"Great, now we have to waste our free time doing classwork. As if we don't have enough already," Kirche complained.

"Yeah, but at least we spent our free time helping the Princess instead of doing something useless. That's something, right?" Saito chirped up.

"Shut up, Saito. You aren't the one that has to go through these classes, you know," Louise muttered.

The group made their way to the dining hall for lunch, where many seats were already freeing up from those who finished early. The gang filled their plates with the remains, eating as quickly as proper manners would allow. They then cleaned up and started for the lecture hall. Saito peeled off and went to go nap under a tree, but Tails stuck with the girls as they made their way through the Academy's halls.

"You know you don't have to come, right?" Louise said.

"Yeah, well, I sorta enjoy class," Tails replied. "Professor Colbert is a cool guy to hang around, and alchemy is pretty interesting."

Kirche raised an eyebrow. "You actually like this stuff? It just about puts me to sleep, its' so boring." 

"Well, we don't have alchemy where I come from, remember? No magic, all science," Tails explained. "All those elements and alloys you see Professor Colbert making, like brass, bronze, or aluminum? We have to mine the base elements and use either forging or chemical processes to make them. We can't just wave a wand and 'make it so', so it's pretty unique and interesting to watch," he added enthusiastically.

"Wow, that sounds like it sucks, not being able to use magic," Kirche replied.

"well, yes and no, I suppose," the fox said with a shrug. "Since we didn't have magic, we found other ways to make what we need, including some pretty cool technology. For example, my plasma cutter!" Tails said, bringing his T-Buster to the ready with a three-foot-long beam of yellowish plasma. He quickly shut it back down to avoid hurting anyone. "It's essentially a microwave that heats the air in front of it so hot, it forms into a plasma thats' contained within a strong self-generated magnetic field. The sheer heat of the beam can melt or cut through almost any material, short of other energy constructs like Power Rings, Chaos Emeralds, or Planet Eggs."

"Wow, that's sooo cool!" Kirche said, fascinated with Tails' red arm cannon. "How long did it take you to build that?"

"Eh, a couple of weeks? The real pain was getting Knuckles to let me use the Master Emerald to kickstart the Power Ring generator built in."

The students entered the empty study hall, taking their seats at the front row of tables. Professor Colbert stood at the front of the room, fiddling around with a set of materials and tools as he waited for the students to take their seat. When Tails and the three girls were ready, Professor Colbert took a final glance at his notes and began...

"Alright," Colbert announced, clearing his throat with a brief cough. "The basic ideas for this lecture involves properties of certain metals, and why we use some metals over others," he began. He picked up a small block of silvery metal, pockmarked with small splotches of rust. "For example, iron for swords. It's easy to make, easy to forge, not hard to synthesize via alchemy, and holds its shape well with tempering. High quality iron can be produced through alchemy, but many times, iron is still mined to turn into other elements, due to its high alchemical value that makes it somewhat un-economical to synthesize en masse. That's also why we still use gold as a currency – it's much too expensive to synthesize via alchemy, so the government can keep the amount of minted gold coins in the market in check by restricted mining and cracking down on illegal printing. Anyway enough about the economy-"

"Sir," Tails asked, raising his hand. "Wouldn't you want to use 6150 spring steel or Damascus steel for swordmaking instead, given that it's lighter, stronger, and won't rust?"

"Any form of steel is extremely hard to produce, unfortunately," Professor Colbert replied, setting the iron block down. "Steel requires an entire day of smelting to produce only small quantities of material suitable for a sword. Only the finest knights receive steel swords as a gift from Her Highness, as a symbol of prestige."

Tails traced a thought in his head. "Why not just melt iron and blow oxygen through it with magic, adding quicklime to stable the process? You could shorten the worktime per ton of steel to about twenty minutes, tops, with much better quality control."

"I don't quite know what you're talking about, unfortunately.. I'll have to do more research, I suppose. It's an interesting proposition. Anyways, back to the lesson at hand…" Professor Colbert said, returning to his lesson with unparalleled enthusiasm. Tails did his best to politely pay attention, but as the day dragged on, he realized that most of the lessons he'd be covering detailed properties of metals he knew, with very little explanation of how alchemy worked. Tabitha was reading her book, as usual, and Louise and Kirche were hastily scrawling down notes as they went. Other students began filtering in to do basic studies and review of the day's lesson, occasionally asking questions when Professor Colbert paused his flurry of speech to take a breath.

"Tails, I don't suppose you'd have anything to say on the matter?" Professor Colbert asked.

Having started to doze off, Tails snapped to attention at the sound of his name. "Sorry sir, please repeat the question?" Some students snickered a bit in the back corner of the hall, only to be cut short by a brief glare from Professor Colbert.  
"Various properties of metals," the Professor restated, turning his attention back to Tails. "I'm sure there's things you could show us from your world, is there not?"

Tails' eyes lit up. "Oh yeah, there's a lot we could do. How much time do we have?"

"An hour or two, about. It's open study hall at the moment, so I just take time to answer questions."

"Alright, I'll focus on electricity, then. Fun stuff." Tails hopped out of his seat and walked up to the front of the room. He cleared his throat to catch people's attention, and began. "So, I'm not sure how much you guys know about electricity, but it's pretty powerful. Lightning from a large storm? That's electricity, and a lot of it. That little shock you get touching some stuff after scrubbing your feet across a carpet? That's static electricity. Everything you see is made up of atoms in various arrangements that-"

"What are atoms?" A student asked.

Tails sighed and held up his hands in defeat. "Okay, rewind a bit. Atoms are absurdly small collections of these things called protons, neutrons, and electrons. Atoms make up elements, which make up cells in your body, which in turn make up the parts of your body – to put it in perspective, you have billions of cells in your body, and each cell may have millions of atoms. There are trillions of atoms in your body alone, so infinitely small that you probably won't ever see them in your lifetime. As for the parts of an atom, think of those parts as small orbs that are made up of other stuff, but we won't worry about that."

At this point, the students were thoroughly lost, but Tails pressed on. "An atom is made of two parts, the nucleus, and the electron shell," he said, drawing a diagram of a lithium atom on the large wall-mounted chalkboard behind him. "The nucleus is made of protons and neutrons. Protons have a positive charge, and attract the electrons inward from the electron shell, which have a negative charge. You guys ever used a compass? Yeah, that's a magnet, which sorta works like protons and electrons in a way. Hold two compasses together and they'll line up, one north pointing at the other compass' south. That's sorta the same way with electrons and protons; opposites attract. Ferromagnetic metals like iron and cobalt can be made into magnets with a bit of coersion. Here, I'll show you." Tails picked up the small block of iron Professor Colbert had used for his lecture and set it on the table in front of him. Readying his T-Buster's plasma cutter, the students watched on in awe as the fox gingerly cut the block in half, careful not to cut into the desk as molten iron began to flow from the cut ends.

"While we wait for this to cool, I'll try to explain what I just did. In these pieces of metal, there are trillions of atoms made up of a specific number of neutrons, protons, and electrons that define iron. Their electrons are spinning around each of their individual nuclei, in a relatively random direction," he said, pointing back to the diagrams he'd drawn on the chalkboard. "However, when we apply a relatively strong existing electromagnet in a certain way, such as the containment field for my T-Buster's plasma cutter, we can align these electrons into a single, unified orbit. This creates a permanent magnet. Now, if we put the two ends with an imbalance of electrons on one side, they should repel. Watch."

With the two metal blocks sufficiently cool, Tails took the two pieces of metal and waved the plasma cutter's beam over the top of the bars of metal, heating them to nearly glowing-hot temperatures. With the job done, he disengaged his T-Buster and had Professor Colbert cool them down with a bucket of water before grabbing the two warm pieces of metal, placing them together. When he let go, the two bars of iron shot across the desk to either end. Oohs and aahs erupted from the students as Tails turned one of the bars around and moved them a little closer, allowing the magnetic field to take over and slam the two bars together with a loud click.

"That's the gist of a magnet. You can make them with a lot of different things. As I was going to say earlier, electricity is a form of movement of these same electrons from atom to atom. To do it, all you have to do is create an imbalance of electrons on one side of a circuit. This can be done in many ways, but a chemical reaction is the usual method. Different metals have different electrical properties, so they can be used in different ways. For example," Tails said, drawing a quick circuit on the chalkboard. "We can create a storage device for electricity by having two conductive plates side by side, charging one with excess electrons. If we then create a circuit of, say, copper wire and a tungsten wire to connect the two plates, the electrons will take the path of least resistance to balance the charge between the two plates. Various metals have different resistance values, and that's something that's hard to determine without more advanced tools, but we know for a fact that copper has a very low resistance value, and tungsten has a high resistance value. Even though tungsten has a high resistance value, it's not nearly as high as air, the gap between the two iron plates. Therefore, the electrons will transfer through the atoms of copper and tungsten to travel back to the other plate. However, because tungsten has a very high resistance value, it wastes an absurd amount of energy as light, and some heat. This is the concept behind an incandescent lightbulb, a way of creating light out of electricity."

The students' attention was thoroughly affixed on Tails and the blackboard behind him, trying to grasp the wall of ideas that had presented itself. Having a slight grasp on the topic, Professor Colbert stepped forward, grinning like a happy child. "Absolutely fascinating, Miles! There are many experiments I would like to try, if you have the time. How were you able to discover atoms, if they're so small?"

"Good question. It wasn't me, atoms were discovered well before I was born. First experiments tried the hypothesis of atoms by chemical reaction. Two known amounts of reactants were put together, with precise measurements of the product and the remains. First tests used pure tin metal and pure oxygen, a component of air. Scientists were able to identify that tin could react with two distinct amounts of air to create two different tin alloys, one comprising of 13.5 percent oxygen, the other comprising of 27 percent oxygen. Because they combined at a ratio of two to one, it became a theory that they were combining by some integer of a unit, namely atoms. For example, your body takes in oxygen when you breathe in and creates carbon dioxide. Oxygen that you breathe is made of two oxygen atoms. However, carbon dioxide is made of a single carbon and two oxygen atoms. Therefore, for every one oxygen atom you breathe in, you exhale one carbon dioxide atom. Or at least you would, if it weren't for inefficiencies in any biological component of an organism, including humans. Fun fact, your brain uses electricity to make your body function. It sends electrical signals down a nerve cord, similar to how electricity travels along a copper wire. Your muscles react to the input of electricity, twitching in response to the electrical pulse. That's why my T-Buster is so effective at incapacitating people, because it overloads their muscles with electricity, causing them to spasm out. It also overloads their brain, forcing them into unconsciousness."

"Can you show us?" a student asked excitedly.

"If you don't mind being put in excruciating pain, sure! However, I doubt that would be okay with Professor Colbert, so we'll save that until some other army comes knocking," Tails joked.

"Thank you for your time, Miles. Louise, Tabitha, Kirche, you are dismissed. Feel free to leave if you so choose. Any questions on this morning's studies?" Professor Colbert asked.

Tails grabbed his magnets from the desk and made his way to the door, followed by Louise and Kirche.

"Is Tabitha not coming?" Tails asked, noticing the blue-haired girl still seated in her desk.

"No, she's the bookworm type. She enjoys reading in there, because she occasionally gets to listen in on interesting nerdy conversations. Not my thing, when we're in there for hours on end during the morning." Kirche said. "Great job with the lecture, by the way. No idea what half of it meant, but it was a heck of a lot more interesting than Colbert."

"Thanks!" Tails replied, taking a last look at Tabitha before stepping out of the classroom. "I always loved physics and chemistry, ever since I was a little kid. My friends always joked that Princess Sally brought me up reading dictionaries and Rotor's old physics textbooks instead of fairy tales at bedtime."

"Really?" Kirche laughed, shaking her head. "Yeah, I could imagine that. You sound like you should be teaching your own school when you talk like that. You should probably take over some classes for Professor Colbert, at least! It'd be more interesting, anyway…"

"Yeah, well, I wouldn't be able to teach you magic, and that's what the Academy's about, right? Wouldn't do you any good."

"I don't know about you two, but I'm starving," Louise butted in. "I'm going to get dinner. The dining hall should open any minute. See you two later."


	18. Season 1 Chapter 18

SEASON 1 CHAPTER 18:

Tails stepped out of the kitchen with a plate loaded down with porkchops and cooked greens, headed out to have his evening meal in the waning sunset at his table. After a brief second thought, he stopped by his workshop and picked up his scimitar and a couple of cleaning supplies to give himself something to do after dinner. He sat down at his table and set his plate and silverware aside, laying out the sword, whetstone, oil and cleaning cloth on the table in front of him.

"I really ought to make a name for this sword," he thought, looking over the blue-tinted steel blade. "Knights always had a cool name their sword in fairy tales. Derflinger only has a name because he can talk, though, so maybe it's not that common. I think I'll call it Ring Bearer. Yeah, that's got a nice ring to it."

"Ugh, dude, watch the puns," a voice said, the scratchy, growly words filling Tails' head as if he'd said it himself.

"What the…" Tails asked in surprise, scanning the field for signs of life. Nothing moved.

"I'm in your head. It's my only form of communication, since you didn't design a mouthpiece for me to speak through," the voice rang out again.

"Who is this? Where are you?"

The voice sighed, tsking in disappointment. "Good god, you aren't nearly as bright as everyone says you are. The sword, you idiot. Didn't you expect something like this after meeting my partner, Derflinger? Anyways, it'd be nice if you could give me something to speak with. All you have to do is tell me how to communicate, and I'll make it work."

"Uhh, alright. One sec, let me finish this before it gets cold" Tails said, setting down the sword and scarfing down his meal. When he finished his food, he picked up the scimitar and his other supplies and took off for the workshop. "Does it have to be something that moves, like that little hilt piece on Derflinger?" he asked.

"Yeah, anything that can move. In the past, relying only on telepathy has driven people to insanity, including my wielder. Also, some people hate having me around, since I basically read people's thoughts all the time. Creeps people out."

Bursting into the dark interior of the small wooden workshop, Tails cleaned off a section of Professor Colbert’s workbench space and set the curved blade down. He searched through the piles of Colbert’s research stuff until he found a small chunk of iron, most likely the result of some one-off alchemy experiment. He set the block of iron on the workbench and drew his T-Buster, adjusting the plasma-cutter's beam width as small as it would go.

"That's a fancy weapon you got there," the sword said in Tails' mind. "I've never seen anything like it. Mind if I check it out?"

"What do you mean, 'check it out'?"

"You know how Derf told you he could jump bodies if his gets broken? Yeah, well, that's something I can do at any time. Just different areas of training we specialized in."

"Oh, well, it's nothing special," Tails said as he worked the plasma cutter. Carving through the block of iron with a rock-steady aim, the fox cut out a small u-shaped piece and a small pin. "It's just a multi-tool I built for breaking into Eggman's bases, really. By the way, I'm not sure if you feel pain, but if you do, this might hurt when I punch through the back side of the blade to add this."

"I doubt it. I can't remember the last time I felt pain."

Tails held up the u-shaped piece of metal to the back of the scimitar's blade near the hilt, making sure that the chunk was wide enough to fit around the blade. "Well, here goes nothing," he thought, setting the u-shaped piece on top of the sword, roughly where he wanted to drill the holes. He pulled the sword back so that the hilt was hanging off of the table and placed a heavy glass beaker on the tip of the blade, holding it in place while he worked. Standing on his stool, he plunged the plasma-cutter's beam straight down through the metal chunk and the sword, holding the blade as still as he could. When the beam contacted the sword, the invisible voice let out an earsplitting, feminine shriek in his head.

As Tails quickly withdrew the plasma cutter, the voice broke out in laughter. "Just kiddin', bro. Didn't feel a thing."

"Screw you," the fox muttered, clutching his chest with his free hand. "You could've given me a heart attack." He quickly returned to his work, boring his way through the rest of the blade. Before the metal could cool, he quickly shut down his T-Buster and slid the u-shaped metal piece over the blade, punching the pin into place with the remains of the iron block. "There we go. As the metal cools, it should form a nice little weld that'll keep it together," he thought, taking a moment to admire the crude little job.

Suddenly, the metal chunk began flapping up and down, slapping against the hilt with a dull clank over and over. "This seems to work nicely" the sword-spirit-thing mused. "Sweet."

Tails sat back on his stool, watching the sword with curiosity. "So, what's your name?"

"Well, I'm actually new to this business. This is my first deployment in a long time. I don't even remember what my last owner called me, so you can name me whatever you like."

"Alright, uhh, how about…" the fox mumbled, brainstorming for a few minutes. Unable to come to a conclusion, he turned back to the sword. 

"Well, what can you do beside change bodies?"

"Lots of stuff," he replied. "I'm not as good as Derflinger at absorbing magic, but I can change bodies freely as opposed to only on losing my current body. I can't give you any extra combat strength like Derflinger can, that's a Gandalfr thing. However, I can help you control your shield, and even cast it on other people you aren't touching, with enough power. Also, I can still use telepathy, which can be helpful for reading people's minds in combat, as well as detecting someone sneaking up on you. I also try practicing ventriloquy and singing for fun."

"Cool. Probably the most logical name would be something related to armor or the mind, then…" Suddenly, a lightbulb went on in Tails' head. "Hey, I don't suppose you feel a difference when I snap this ring in and out of the groove there, can you?" With a quick tug, he pulled the golden Power Ring out of its' slot in the back of the blade's tip, holding it at arm's length away from the sword.

"WHOA, yeah. Damn, losing that makes me feel like I wanna take a nap. I hadn't noticed it before, 'cuz I came into the blade with it already there. I didn't know why I was feeling so jumpy and energetic when I got here."

"Well, then how about we name you Ring? This Power Ring is a form of condensed energy that I use in combat, but if you can feel it, you can use it too. We'll have to work on how we can get you to tap into that power, but if you can, the name would be fitting."

"Eh, I guess it could be worse. I can tell that with the Ring whatchamacallit, there's a noticeable increase in how far I can feel people's minds. With the Ring, I can cover the entire campus, I think."

Tails let out a low whistle. "Dang, that's some range. I'll try to keep the ring in place during combat, but I may need to remove it and use it for myself once every now and then. Anyways, let's have some fun, shall we?" he added with a little grin.

"I like where this is going. What's the plan?"

"You said you can read people's minds, right? Can you find someone for me by name and appearance?"

"Probably. Who do you have in mind?"

"A student named Geoffrey. Brown haired kid, probably over in the dining hall. Pretty tall, some muscles, pretty stuck up. Find anyone like that?"

A moment of silence.

"Yeah, I got your guy," Ring replied. "What're we doing?"

"Can you relay what he's thinking to me?" Tails asked.

"Sure, I suppose. Let's give it a shot."

Tails sat still and closed his eyes. After a moment of silence, Geoffrey's voice filled the air, as if he were right in front of Tails, talking to him.  
" -amn, she's got a fine body!" Ring said, in a nearly perfect impersonation of Geoffrey. "Gonna have to drop by her place this evening. All the girls here seem so… boring, flat and lacking, but Kirche makes up for it all!

Tails burst out laughing, nearly falling out of his seat. "Oh god, this is great! He's in the dining hall, fawning over Kirche! What an idiot."

"What's so funny, bro?"

"Oh yeah, you weren't here that night. I share three masters, as a familiar," the fox explained. "Kirche, the girl that guy is going bug-eyed over, is one of them. To people like him, she’s the local beauty queen; so much so that guys are knocking on her door at all hours. Last time I was at her place, guys kept using their familiars to fly up to her window. I had to spend an entire night with Flame, Kirche’s salamander familiar, knocking them out of the window. Looks like we'll be in for a treat tonight, with the king of jerks himself coming to get a slice of the action."

"Eh, whatever. Just curious, are you one of those sadistic, love to put people in pain kind of guys?"

"No,” Tails replied, shaking his head. “Why do you ask?"

"That's one of the few things I remembered about my last partner. He loved inflicting pain, but was really reserved as to how he dealt it out. Loved that poetic justice stuff."

"Sounds like he was a jerk," Tails replied with a frown. "No, I don't enjoy putting people in pain if I can't help it, although most of the time it’s unavoidable; I can’t outrun my problems like Sonic can.” The fox let out a brief yawn, stretching back in his seat. “Anyways, since dinner is probably over, we can head up to Kirche's room. If you wanna mess around, go for it. Just don't let her know it's you."

Ring chuckled. "I like your style. You got a grudge or somethin'?"

"No, not at all. It's just… Never mind. Don’t take it too far.”

Tails picked up Ring and gave the blade’s edge a quick pass with the whetstone and oil cloth before stepping outside, giving it a few quick test swings. He made his way over to Kirche's dorm tower and hiked the stairs up to her room, knocking three times before entering. Inside, he found Kirche already wrapped up in bed with Flame spread out next to her, his head at her feet. She was reading a small leather-bound book by the light of the magic fire that sprouted from the tip of Flame's tail, leafing through the pages with mild interest.

"Hey Kirche," Tails said, announcing his presence as he closed the door. "Whatcha reading?"

Kirche looked up from her book. "Hey Tails! Reading an old spellbook I borrowed from Tabitha to see if there are any new spells I can learn. Its’ mostly water and ice magic, though, so its’ not been super helpful…" Her gentle smile turned to a frown as she looked around the room in surprise. "…did you just say something?" she asked.

"Nope. By the way, you can expect at least Geoffrey tonight, possibly even his blond-haired buddy," he replied, taking a seat at the small table near the door.

"Oh? How did you figure that out?"

Tails shrugged. "Overheard them discussing "plans" when they left the dining hall."

Kirche squinted at Tails, scanning his face with unusual scrutiny. "…Okay, how are you doing it?"

"Doing what? Jeez, I'm just sitting here. Is there a problem?" he replied, feigning innocence. He could see her set the book down, holding her place with a finger. She was smiling once more, almost unnoticeably blushing in the orangeish-red light of Flame's tail fire. "I must just be imagining things. I hear you saying stuff, but your mouth isn't moving."

"Maybe you're just tired. I'll take Flame on the floor with me so you can get some sleep, if you like," he offered.

"So, how'd you like that?" Ring said in Tails' mind.

"That was some pretty good voice-acting, I gotta say. Had her totally fooled," Tails thought, grinning. "That said, knock it off for now. Can you tell how close Geoffrey is, and whether he has company?"

"Let's see…He's a floor below us, in the stairwell. He's got two guys with him."

"This should be good."

"They're closing in on the door," Ring stated. Right on cue, a short string of knocking filled the room, grabbing Kirche's attention just as she was about to doze off. "Tails, could you get that please? Open it slowly, so I can see who it is," she asked.

Another series of knocks.

"Ring, read their thoughts. Find anything indicating violence?" Tails thought.

"Nope, nothing like that. They're totally focused on Kirche. Some pretty kinky thoughts, I might add," he replied.

The fox cringed at the idea. "Save it for later. Later, as in never." He hopped up from his chair and reached for the door handle, but the door flung open before he could reach it. Geoffrey and two buddies, including his blond-haired friend Tails had seen before, stormed into the center of the room. Flame, startled awake by the sudden burst of action, growled aggressively at the three intruders. None of the three boys seemed to have noticed Tails in the corner of the room, hidden behind the door.

"Kirche, I have a question," Geoffrey said, locking eyes with the red-haired girl. "Will you go out with me?"

Kirche gave the brown-haired boy a seducing smile. "Well, if that's what you wanted to ask, you didn't need to slam open the door. Yeah, how about a dinner in two days? In town?"

Tails, seated in his chair once again, wrapped his hand around Ring's handle in nervous preparation. "How do I know you won't cheat on me between now and then?" Geoffrey continued, advancing on Kirche despite Flame's increased growling. "We could just do it now."

Kirche laughed nervously, reaching for her wand. Geoffrey drew his much faster, forcing her to withdraw her hand. "Good choice. You two, get rid of her lizard."

"You touch Flame, and you're a dead man," Kirche said, the resentment in her voice almost palpable. She looked around the room, briefly locking eyes with Tails.

Tails nodded and, seeing his opportunity, launched out of the door's shadow as Geoffrey's two compatriots moved to grab Flame. He tripped up Geoffrey's blond-haired friend with his tails as he dashed forward, wrapping the curved scimitar blade around Geoffrey's neck and pulling it tight, held in one hand by the handle and the other by the Power Ring embedded in the blade. "Touch either of them and I'll pull," the Mobian snarled, his pearly-white canines gleaming in the light of Flame's tail. The scimitar's razor-sharp edge was already starting to bite into the boy's neck as he struggled, drawing a thin line of blood just below his adam's apple.

As Geoffrey's two friends tried to flee, Flame leaped from the bed and slammed the blond-haired boy back to the ground, nearly engulfing the poor boy's head in his massive, razor-tooth-lined jaws. The third boy managed to escape, sprinting down the hall at breakneck speeds.

Seeing the situation under control, Kirche hopped out of bed and donned a heavy robe over her nightclothes. "Well, it looks like the school has its first expulsions for the year. Great job, Tails."

Tails shook his head, calming down. "Geoffrey, what the hell? She even said yes, but you couldn't keep your pants up for two days? That's low."

"You wouldn't understand," the pompous boy replied, straining to keep his throat still to avoid further injury. "I know the rumors. Kirche would just 'conveniently' not show up if she felt like it. You wouldn't understand having any sort of relationship, you inbred freak of nature."

Tears began to well up in Tails' eyes, but he blinked them away. "I won't kill you, but if I could, I'd... you don't even want to know," he said, a slight tremor in his voice accenting his words. A single tear managed to slip free of his eyes, landing on the boy's shoulder and quickly disappearing into the fabric of his starched white shirt.

"Tails, turn him around while I get dressed," Kirche said, moving toward her dresser. "We'll get him to Headmaster Osmond tonight."  
Reluctantly, Tails dropped the scimitar from Geoffrey's throat. As the boy began to turn around, Tails grabbed him by the shoulder and cracked him over the head with the flat side of the blade's heavy tip, knocking him out with a sickening smack.

Kirche looked over at Geoffrey where Tails laid him against the wall and shook her head with a satisfied grin. "You know, he can't exactly give a testimony or defense argument when he's knocked out."

"Like he needs defense…" the fox muttered.

As he quickly wiped his eyes, Kirche walked over and rubbed his head, ruffling his hair. "Hey, you okay? Is something wrong?... hey, he was totally out of line, calling you a freak."

"No, it's fine, I get it a lot. I'm good now."

Unconvinced, Kirche returned to getting dressed while Tails went about dislodging the blond-haired boy from Flame's mouth. As he pulled the boy to his feet, he pointed to Geoffrey. "You get to carry him up to Osmond's office with us. Don't even try to run." The massive red salamander let out a fearsome growl, reinforcing Tails' command in the boy's mind.

The blond boy nodded frantically, rushing to pick up his fallen friend on his back. When Kirche was ready, she led them down the stairs of the dorm tower and into the central tower of the Academy, beginning the long trek up the massive staircase to Osmond's office. "There's an old rumor that Headmaster Osmond sleeps in his office, since the stairs are so tall," Kirche stated, trying to lighten up the mood between the three.

"I guess we'll find out," Tails replied. He watched Geoffrey like a hawk as he climbed the stairs behind his blond-haired friend, ready to give him another solid punch if he began to wake up. They reached the top of the stairs without any incident, however. He stepped forward to knock on the door, receiving a muffled response welcoming them inside. Pushing open the door, he found the elderly headmaster seated at his desk, laboring over a large stack of papers by candlelight.

Looking up from his papers, Osmond hopped up from his desk and rushed over to Geoffrey as his friend set him down in one of the office chairs. "What is the meaning of this? Why does he have cuts on his neck? Was he attacked?"

"Geoffrey here tried to get into my room with two others and do… things," Kirche stated bluntly. "Tails here captured him while Flame grabbed his buddy here. One escaped."

Osmond nodded, turning to Geoffrey's friend with a stern glare. "Well, if that's the case, I'll need to write to his parents, and yours, to have them come pick you both up. You and I will be having a little chat, to say the least. Professor Colbert should be coming up soon to do a nightly report before bed; I'll have him take you both to the dungeon after you and I are through. Understood?"

The blond-haired boy nodded nervously and took a seat next to his knocked-out friend, awating his fate. Satisfied with the boy's reaction, Osmond turned back to Tails and Kirche. "You two are dismissed. Have a good evening."

Tails and Kirche stepped out of the office into the stairwell, silently shutting the door behind them as Professor Osmond began to interrogate the young man. Echoing up the stairs, Tails could hear Professor Colbert beginning the endless trek up the stairs, his footsteps faintly rebounding off the stone brick walls. The two begin to make their way down the staircase, pushing past Professor Colbert without a word about halfway down.

"Hey, Tails," Kirche stated, breaking the silence. "I was thinking… You're probably used to being called a freak for your tails, right? Two can't be normal. Does it really get to you that much?"

"Occasionally," Tails replied brusquely. While it was true that it wasn't his favorite conversational topic, he knew that wasn't the source of his outburst. He didn't care to talk about either, frankly.

"…It wasn't that, was it? You were crying about the relationships insult, weren't you?"

After a moment's pause, Tails conceded with a nod. "Yeah. Just concern for my friends back home, that's all. I told them I thought I was headed to Earth, where I would meet up with my friend Chris. If that were the case, I would have been able to contact them, even go back and forth to visit them. However, because I was sent here and haven't been able to make contact, I'm sure they're worried about me."

"You know that's not what Geoffrey meant. It's a girlfriend, isn't it?"

"No, not at all," Tails said, shaking his head. Underneath his fur, he could feel his face begin to heat up. "Close friends, some of whom happen to be girls. I'm close to all of them, so I get this way sometimes. Don't worry about it, just a sort of extreme homesickness."

Reaching the bottom of the stairs, Tails felt himself be spun around. Kirche wrapped her arms around him and pulled him into a hug, letting out a warm, gentle laugh. "Tails, it's so funny that you try to understand it so logically. It's okay, I understand," she reassured him. "You love her and you're worried for her. I'm sorry for the grief he caused."

As a torrent of bad memories filled his head and left a bitter taste in his mouth, Tails returned the embrace. "Thanks a lot for understanding, Kirche. Anyways, let's get to bed. I assume that even riding Sylphid, it's a long trip to the castle."

Kirche nodded, leaving Tails to his brooding as they walked silently back to her room. When they stepped inside, Tails set his scimitar aside and flopped down on his bed of quilts at the foot of Kirche's bed, closing his eyes while Kirche changed back into her nightclothes. When she was in bed, she used her wand to extinguish the several candles around the room, plunging the room into near darkness aside from Flame's tail in the corner of the room.

"Hey, partner," Ring said in Tails' mind, cutting through the fox's own thoughts. "Not to have my nose up your rear all the time, but I was watching your thoughts during your moment on the stairs. You were having some pretty dark thoughts there for a while. Care to share the story?"

Tails could hear loud shuffling in the corner of the room, catching his attention. Flame had uncurled himself from his sleeping position, silently making his way over to Tails and curling up at his side, licking him on the face with his scaly forked tongue. "Must've noticed I wasn't happy. Must have pretty good emotional recognition skills, like dogs," he thought with a smile, rubbing the massive red salamander's head. Flame growled in appreciation and cuddled up next to Tails, laying himself down on the edge of Tails' makeshift bed. He could feel the salamander's unusually warm body through his fur, comforting him.

"So?" Ring continued.

"I don't want to talk about it," the fox thought. "I used to have nightmares about it. If you're that curious, maybe you'll get to see one sometime. Otherwise, leave me alone."

"Fine, fine. Feel free to talk if ya need to get somethin' off your chest, though. I'll always be here."

Tails nodded. "Thanks, Ring," he thought, silently yawning. As Flame's deep breathing rocked him gently back and forth, he shut his eyes and slipped into a deep sleep.


	19. Season 1 Chapter 19

SEASON 1 CHAPTER 19:

Tails curled up and dove out of bed, achieving several moments of airtime before face-planting on the floor. Bathed in a cold sweat, his eyes shot open as the short burst of pain and soreness cut through his sleeplessness. "Oww… what the hell?" he muttered to himself, rubbing his sore back as he stood up.

"You ok?" Ring asked in his head. "You got some pretty good height on that jump, being flat on the ground and all."

"Yeah, I'm ok. Sorry if I woke you up with that," Tails thought.

"Don't worry about it, I'm a light sleeper. I was already awake and watching you as you were leaving the ground."

"Dang, that's fast."

"Bro… I'm sorry if I was being too nosy last night. I saw your dreams, so I get it now. Blowing up a planet with your girlfriend-turned-tree on it is rough, and I'm-"

"Don't worry about it. I've got things under control, so I'm fine now." Tails stood up and gathered his shoes, gloves, and Ring. He crept out of the door, doing his best not to wake Kirche after all of the racket he'd just caused.

"Where we headed, partner?" Ring asked out loud once Tails closed Kirche's bedroom door behind him.

"I don't think I'll be able to sleep any more, so I'm gonna head out to do some training," Tails said. He headed downstairs, stepping out into the open lawn still glistening with morning dew. Only the smallest sliver of orange light began to rise over the horizon, providing just enough light to practice some basic moves. He made his way across the campus grounds, heading out through the main gate to the grassy field beyond the perimeter wall.

"Alright, Ring. Let's see what you've got. Make a shield over there a ways," Tails ordered, pointing out into the field with his sword.

"You got it, boss," Ring said with a stupid accent. With a small spark of light from the tip of the scimitar, a blue dome of light appeared where Tails was pointing, encompassing a ten-foot diameter.

"Cool!" Tails exclaimed, lowering the blade. "Alright, can you move the shield?"

The dome of blue light slid to the left a ways, then back to the right to its' original position.

"Good. Can you make the shield different shapes?"

In a blur of light, the dome reshaped itself into a replica of Tails' body, a perfect mirror image of himself. The blue mannequin waved back at him, then bowed at the waist. "Alright, you can drop that shield," he said, nodding. "Try making a dagger shaped one in front of me, then move it forward about ten feet as fast as you can."

A sharp pointed blade of light appeared in front of Tails, holding still for about a second. Without warning, the blade disappeared and reappeared almost instantaneously, only an arm's reach away from the fox.

"Alright," Tails said, grinning wide. "Getting punched at the speed of light has gotta hurt, I bet."

"All well and good, but remember, you can only have one shield entity at a time," Ring stated. "While I'm using a shield like a dagger, you won't be able to have a bubble of your own."

"Fine. We'll just need to work on it some more," Tails said. Suddenly, in the dark woods hundreds of feet away, a bright flash caught Tails' eye. "Ring, you see that?" he thought, squinting to catch a glimpse of the source of the mysterious light.

"No, I didn't catch it. I don't sense any intelligent life around you that isn't in the Academy, so you should be good. Just be careful."

"Alright, keep your… mind peeled, I suppose," Tails muttered, stopping to correct himself. "That flash might have been pretty far away and out of your range, so there could still be someone there."

"Will do."

Tails took to the skies, using only his tails only to keep from being spotted. He swept with a discerning eye, searching around where he thought the flash might have come from, but nothing seemed obviously out of place. "Ring, you sensing anything? I'm not seeing anything out of the ordinary from up here," he asked.

"Eh, Yes and no. No humans, so that's not a threat. However, I sense the presence of a couple weapons I could jump to.

"What kinds? How far for each of them?"

"Let's see… There's traces of that light sword thing you have still hanging around your arm that I could jump to… there's a rusty old sword and axe in the woods, a couple weapons at the burial site for those soldiers… and some wacky-ass large thing under the tree cover. Forward a bit."

Tails flew by Ring's directions, descending below the treetops in a small clearing not too far from where Ring had directed him. Among what seemed to be a muddy bog, he could see the glint of reflected morning sunlight ahead from a pile of broken tree branches. He flew over to the pile and began removing the branches, freezing in surprise when it hit him. "Holy cow, it's my X Tornado!" he exclaimed, redoubling his efforts to clear away the branches. "It must have scraped a tree when it fell, knocking off all these limbs."

"What is it?" Ring asked.

"This is a creation of mine, a jet fighter named the X Tornado!" Tails proudly announced, tossing aside the last limb and hopping down from the gleaming golden craft. "It was one of my favorite planes I kept in a hangar back at my house on Mobius, my homeworld. It's a fully combat-ready aircraft, or at least it was until it landed here. I'll have to do tons of cleaning work on it to ensure it's flight-worthy, with all of this mud in it. And, to be honest, I'm not sure how we're gonna get it out of here…"

"So what are we gonna do? We'll need something strong to get it out of here, right?"

"To be honest, I'm not sure if I want to move it out of the woods just yet," Tails said, stepping back from the craft. "We don't have a relatively secret place to store it, and I definitely don't want people seeing this."

"Well, you gotta get it free of the swamp at least, right? Try using a Power Ring to pull it free of the mud! That might give you enough strength," Ring suggested.

"Well, it might work... Yeah, let's give it a go." Tails snapped the Power Ring out of its' slot in Ring's blade, activating the donut-sized taurus. Surrounded by the Power Ring's golden aura, he set Ring up against a tree and walked over to the X Tornado, grabbing on to the front landing gear. With a quick rev of his tails and rocket shoes, he was slowly able to make the plane budge, but it quickly got stuck again.

"Hey, I got a better idea," Tails said, pulling up his T-Buster. "Can you form a shield around the plane and lift it out? I've got another Power Ring here if that helps."

"It's worth a shot," Ring said. Tails flew over to Ring and picked him up, extracting a Power Ring from his T-Buster and snapping it back into place in the blade. "Here goes nothing," Ring stated, letting out a string of grunts as a blue shield enveloped the underbody of the X Tornado. Cradling the aircraft in the shield, Ring slowly lifted the Tornado out of the mud, setting it down on a patch of solid ground. "Easy."

"Great job, Ring!" Tails cheered. "One sec, let me give it a once-over." He walked around the X Tornado, inspecting each nook and cranny for anything other than mud. When he was satisfied that the X Tornado only needed minor dis-assembly for a bath, he reached under the fuselage where a hatch was located. A quick passcode opened the hatch to reveal a large toolbox, gleaming in the dull light with a fresh coat of red paint and equipped with all the necessary portable power tools to maintain the Tornado.  
"Hey, Ring. Any idea how long until sunrise?" he asked. "I need to be back at the Academy by then. We were invited to the castle to see the Princess and I need to be on the carriage when they go."

"I'd guess an hour or two. Why?" Ring asked.

"Eh, I'd like to stay here and clean up the Tornado as much as possible, since it's not good to let mud sit on it. Can you use a shield to lift up some water from the swamp over there?"

"Yeah, give me a sec." A huge bubble of freshwater floated out of the swamp, encapsulated inside a shield. The bubble floated over above the X Tornado and soundlessly disappeared, dumping the water all over the X Tornado and Tails in a freezing rush.

"Holy shit that's cold!" Tails yelped, shaking his head to fling some of the water out of his fur. "You're lucky my tools were still in the Tornado, or you would have royally screwed us over. They aren't as water-resistant as the Tornado is."

"Hey, you're the one that didn't get out of the way, idiot. Not my problem."

"Whatever. Just stay there and don't do anything stupid," the fox muttered. Reaching into the Tornado, he unplugged the toolbox from its' charging rack and popped the lid open, withdrawing a workshop-fresh HUD scanner. Upon unfolding and locking open, the screen projection flickered into life across the glass panel between the two handgrips, still fully charged from the Tornado's battery system and ready to go. He held the device up to the Tornado and pressed a button on the left handle, initiating a wireless system scan. After a moment of processing, an x-ray diagram of the Tornado appeared onscreen, accompanied by a feminine digital voice. "Engine Condition: Excellent. Electronics: Excellent. Hydraulics condition: Moderate damage. See rear left landing gear, cylinder two. Requires fresh fluid, due to leak and contamination. Cylinder one requires replacing due to structural damage, but is holding fluid pressure without contamination," the device chirped. "The ship is airworthy, although recommended three to four days drying time due to potential water damage to active circuits. Do not land in flight mode, due to hydraulics damage." As it spoke, the device indicating to the damaged systems by painting them in bright orange on the blue schematic, detailing the damage in technical specifications.

"Dangit. Looks like it'll need some maintenance before I fly it. I don't like risking flying anything that has structural damage if I can avoid it. So, we'll walk," Tails said, packing up his tools back into their housing in the X Tornado.

"What, we're just gonna leave it here? For someone to come and steal or break?" Ring asked incredulously.

"No. I don't think anyone would know how to fly it, and they'd have a hard time breaking it," Tails replied, patting the aircraft like an old friend. "The canopy glass is bulletproof, and the fuselage is made of a titanium-aluminum-gold alloy. With swords and hammers, it'd take some serious muscle to put even the slightest dent in this baby. Besides, we're getting it out of here. I'll show you," Tails said. He picked Ring off of the tree he was resting against and climbed up on top of the aircraft, popping open the canopy with a manual release switch. Taking a seat in the pilot's chair, he pressed a series of buttons on a control panel that spurred the aircraft to life with a low hum. Once the turbines were thoroughly warmed up, he pressed a few more buttons, putting the Tornado into walker mode. With a sudden lurch of motion, the fuselage of the aircraft slid backward, rising as the engines rotated vertically and hoisted the fuselage into the air. When the transformation was complete, the Tornado stood on its' two engines on end like feet, ready to go. "I installed a walker mode so that we can travel on ground, should an engine fail," Tails explained, grinning like a little kid. "It's not as fast as a horse when on foot, but it helps. Just sit back and enjoy the ride." Comforted by the sight and smells of his favorite plane, he pushed the control stick forward, sending the craft trundling through the forest.

* * *

 

After a few minutes piloting the large machine, Tails reached the edge of a clearing much closer to the Academy, where he powered the craft down and retrieved the large toolkit from the X Tornado. "With these, I can get a basic tool set going back at my workshop," Tails thought.

"Where are you going to store this thing?" Ring asked. "This close to the academy, someone on air patrol will find it eventually, and then all hell breaks loose."

"Well… I hadn't exactly thought that far," Tails replied sheepishly. "I just want to have it on hand in case something happens. Wish I installed that active camouflage prototype before I left, would have made everything so much easier. It'll only be here for a day without cover. Say…" An idea took hold in the fox's head as he flew up to a tree and began breaking off branches with his T-Buster, dropping them on top of the aircraft until the entire craft was covered in foliage. "If it's only air patrols we're worried about, then they'll be too far away to see it through this cover," he thought.

His work complete, Tails engaged his rocket shoes and skated back to the perimeter wall, tool box and Ring in hand. He sped through the front gate, sliding to a stop in front of Professor Colbert's workshop. Gently opening the door to peek inside and check if Professor Colbert was in, he strolled into the room and continued straight on through to his dark underground workshop. Once below, he set his tool box on the floor with a metallic *clank*.

"Damn, I thought you familiars were supposed to be servants," Ring commented. "That's thick metal, by the sound of it. You build this yourself?"

"No, I had one of the professors use alchemy to coat the walls. I left plenty of space at the end that actually continues a ways out from underneath the building into the field, so ideally I would like to build a hangar section out of it, and sneak the plane in at night."

"How are you gonna get the 'plane' thing down here? It isn't gonna fit through that hole, for sure," Ring questioned.

"That's the fun part," Tails replied with a grin. "I'm going to build a hydraulic lift that will raise the dirt, roof, and a platform that I can either walk or taxi onto. With the tools I have here, it should be doable. Especially with this HUD, which has a copy of almost every blueprint I've ever sketched out," Tails said, waving around the device of the hologram screen device. "I've also got a small multi-purpose 3-d printer here that I need to assemble, so with raw materials from Professor Colbert, I should be able to print anything I need from almost any material," he continued, pointing at a pile of parts segregated from actual tools in the large toolbox.

"3D printer? What's that?" Ring asked.

"A device that can take a digitized drawing and print it out of almost any material you give it. Metal, plastic, modeling or molding clay, glass," Tails said. "Heck, probably even dirt if you wanted to," Tails added, jokingly.

" 'Aight, honest question. Can it make lunch?" Ring asked.

Tails broke into a laughter so hard he got the hiccups. "Ring, you're always asking the right questions, aren't you!" he said as he regained his breath. "No, it can't print food, although I wish it could sometimes. I'm hungry, so I'm going to head over to the kitchen to grab some food. Chill here for a bit."


	20. Season 1 Chapter 20

CHAPTER 20:

After a quick food run from the kitchen, Tails made his way back to the workshop to collect Ring. Outside by the gate, Louise, Tabitha, Kirche, and Saito were all waiting alongside Sylphid to leave for the castle.

"Ready?" Tabitha asked the group.

"Yep. It'll be late when we get there if we wait any more. Why can't Tails hurry up?" Louise said, impatiently eyeing the yellow fox as he ran. He was wearing an impromptu sheath at his waist made of cheap leather and canvas, which Ring was firmly stuck in. "Sorry guys, just had to cut up the sheath from that old sword that broke so it would fit the new one. I didn't want to have to carry it by hand all the way there." the fox explained.

"Whatever, let's get going so we don't keep the Princess waiting," Louise sighed, following Tabitha up onto Sylphid's back. Saito and Kirche followed suit, with Tails climbing up at the rear. Once everyone was settled in, Tabitha gave Sylphid a gentle nudge with the heel of her foot, spurring the blue dragon to launch into the air with an explosive leap. Within minutes, the group was cruising along at a nice altitude just below the sparse clouds that dotted the landscape with shadows. No one spoke for a while, until Derf popped out of his sheath on Saito's back. "So, Ring's your name now, is it? When you gonna stop giving everyone the silent treatment? You sure weren't an introvert back in training. You were the most talkative turd of the bunch back in my class," Derf clanked.

Ring freed himself a little from the leather sheath at Tails' side by moving his mouthpiece, popping up just enough to see over the lip of the leather rim. "Yeah, well, orders from Miles," the sword-spirit replied. "Wanted to keep it secret for some reason. Man, you shoulda seen Kirche last night, man! We had her completely psyched out. It was great!"

Everyone turned, surprised by the new, unidentified voice.

"Tails, did your sword just talk back to Derf?" Louise said.

"Hey, lady, you already have one talking sword! Is it really that surprising that we have another?" Derf retorted.

"Yeah, I was keeping it secret," Tails said. "Everyone, meet Ring. He's a talking sword like Derflinger. He sorta just hopped into my sword yesterday evening. Kirche, you already know him from when you thought I was talking, but wasn't. He has telepathy, so he took it upon himself to joke around a little. That's how I knew Geoffrey was coming, thanks to Ring."

"Awesome! Thanks a lot, Ring. Saved me a lot of trouble, for sure," Kirche said.

"No problem, miss," Ring clanked. "Gotta say, those guys were quite the admirers of you, just in the wrong way. You shoulda seen what was going through their heads on their way up the stairs, it was pretty crazy, and even funnier. Lots of s-"

Tails slammed Ring back into his sheath, cutting him off. "That's enough, thanks. I'm sure whatever was going through their heads is more graphic than we care for. And if you share it with telepathy, I'm going to melt you back down and stick to my T-Buster, so shut it."

"Ring, how do you know Derflinger? You said he was in your class? What class?" Louise asked. Ring slid back out of his sheath, under the watchful eye of Tails.

"Uhh, yeah. We have an entity not visible to the human eye, but we have forms outside of the physical things we reside in. We've been around for ages, and there are gatherings led by elder entities to teach the younger generations. Derflinger was one of the elders that taught me how to use powers like he does," Ring said.

"Whoa. So how old are you guys, then?" Kirche questioned.

"I'm about 6000 years old," Derflinger explained. "Bremir's first Gandalfr, an elf named Sasha, created me. I was residing in the weapon used to kill Bremir himself at the time, also by Sasha as it turns out. I've been around alongside every Gandalfr, every time he or she is summoned. On the other hand, Ring over there has only existed for about 1000 years, over two lives. Only a couple times have multiple familiars been summoned by the same mage, so it doesn't always turn out that the fifth familiar of God is needed. Therefore, he doesn't get very much action, and is relatively new to the biz. End of story," Derflinger explained.

"Wait, this has happened before?" Louise exclaimed. "I thought Headmaster Osmond said this was a first."

"That, sweetheart, is because he ain't an old fogey like me," Derflinger replied with a growly laugh. He immediately regretted his words as the pink-haired girl drew her wand and turned on the sword in a flash, forcing him to retreat into his sheath on Saito's back. "Call me sweetheart one more time, and so help me you'll wish you called in sick for the day," Louise retorted, glaring menacingly at what little of Saito's sword poked over the boy's shoulder.

"Fine, fine, don't get all hasty now..." the sword replied, slowly sliding back out of his sheath as the danger passed.

* * *

 

The rest of the ride passed in a relaxed silence as the rolling fields and forests slid by, adorned with the occasional glimmering pond or rock formation. Suddenly, Sylphid let out a low, friendly purr-like growl that shook her entire body, catching everyone's attention. Ahead of them, a sprawling city encompassed a high marble-white castle that stood above the curving streets and alleyways with a dignified flair.

"Wow, it's beautiful!" Tails said, admiring the grandeur of the fairy-tail-esque scene.

"Yeah. It's a view that never gets old, for sure," Louise agreed.

"Hey Louise, why did Princess Henrietta send you special regards before capturing Fouquet? You two related or something?" the fox asked, looking over his shoulder to her for a response.

Louise shook her head. "No, we aren't. We were childhood friends, that's all. We used to play together on the royal grounds since my Father was a part of her advising council for a time, until I was sent to the Academy and she was taken into training in politics by her father."

Slowly descending from the clouds, Sylphid came to a gentle landing in front of the main gate to the castle grounds. Two guards stationed at the gateway approached, weapons at the ready. "Do you have business here?" one of the guards called, the younger of the two.

Louise leaned to the side to get a clear view of the two guards. "Yeah, we were told to come see the Princess after completing a mission for her. My name's Louise Françoise Le Blanc de La Vallière, if she told you I was coming. If not, we can organize to have an audience with her the normal way."

"Oh yes, Mrs. Vallière!" the older of the two guards said, an elderly man who hardly look fit for guard duty. "I remember when I used to watch over you when you played with the Princess as a child. Yes, the Princess said you'd be coming within a few days. She'll be glad to see you again!" He turned to open the main gate, with the assistance of the younger man to haul the heavy wrought-iron gate aside. "Have a good time with the Princess! She's been pretty down lately with the attack and all. I'm sure it'll cheer her up to see you."

"Thank you very much, sir!" Louise said, dismounting Sylphid and walking through the gate.

Saito hopped to the ground and caught up with her as the rest of the group dismounted, not too far behind. "Hey, I'm surprised! That's the first time you didn't refer to a non-noble as a 'peasant' or 'commoner'! Good to see you softening up some," he remarked.

Overhearing the boy's words, Tails didn't even need to watch to guess what came next; namely, a massive, painfully audible slap across the face in, lieu of a stroke of her signature riding crop, that just about sent the boy sprawling to the ground. "The old man is not only a knight, to whom you refer as 'sir', noble or not, but is also a friend of mine as well! Only idiots like you wouldn't get that," Louise spewed, pissed. "Jeez, why did I have to get stuck with the idiot commoner who doesn't even understand basic social structure?"

Briefly rubbing his face, Saito shrugged off Louise's words and fell into step with Tails and the others, leaving Louise to lead the way through the castle's endless hallways and staircases. After a confusing maze of hall after staircase after hall, the group finally made their way through the castle to what appeared to be a throne room, where the Princess was waiting patiently on her throne at the far end of the room. Upon entering, the three girls quickly took to one knee as Princess Henrietta stood up from her ornate chair.

"Get down on your knees, you idiots!" Louise hissed at Saito and Tails as the Princess made her way over. Both quickly took a knee as the Princess approached.

"Everyone, that's not necessary," Princess Henrietta stated, waving her guests to their feet. "You are all heroes for what you've done for me. I've only told my advisors after I had received word from Osmond that you succeeded," Princess Henrietta said. She held out her hand to Saito, who stared, rather confused.

"She's offering to let you kiss her, you idiot. Hurry up!" Louise muttered to the boy. Saito, in a moment of clarity, took Henrietta's hand, stood up, and leaned forward over her, kissing her on the lips.

"Aww shit, he really fucked up this time!" Ring said in Tails' mind. Kirche and Louise stared in awe, unable to comprehend what just happened. Louise was the first to recover, responding with a solid roundhouse punch to Saito's head, launching him several feet from the surprise blow. As she began laying into the poor boy, Princess Henrietta stood in complete shock from the sudden, unexpected kiss and the following forceful removal of Saito from her proximity. She looked over to Saito and motioned for Louise to stop, unable to speak, but the pink-haired girl was locked in an unholy rage and refused to respond. Only after a few moments of silent struggling did Princess Henrietta collect her thoughts and call for Louise to stop.

Disengaged from her sudden rampage, Louise hopped up off of Saito's chest and quickly bowed to the Princess, spewing some unintelligibly fast string of apologies in total embarrassment. Princess Henrietta stepped over and put a hand on her friend's shoulder, silencing her instantly. "It's quite alright, Louise. It was just... unexpected, that's all. Anyhow, back to the reason why I summoned you are here. Could everyone but Saito and Louise please leave? I have important matters to speak with them about," she added, turning to Tails and the other two girls.

Tabitha and Kirche turned to leave, but Tails stood fast. "Princess Henrietta, Louise is my... master, too," He said, hesitating to admit his Familiar status. "Shouldn't I stay if it's a matter that concerns her?"

Princess Henrietta gave the fox a short smile, oblivious to the deathly glare Louise was giving him over her shoulder. "Miles, I appreciate your protective feelings for Louise as a familiar, but being who you are… wouldn't help much at all on this mission," she replied, nodding toward him in general. "Please wait outside for the time being."

Understanding, Tails turned to leave, shutting the door behind him. He joined Tabitha and Kirche out in the hall, sitting on a waiting sofa. "Ring, can you listen in on them?" he thought as he took a seat on the sofa. "Tell me what they're thinking."

"One sec…" Ring replied, falling silent for a few moments. "Okay, get this. Saito is staring down the princess, because she's hot and Saito's a guy. The Princess is having a few flirty thoughts about Saito, probably from the kiss. Louise is thinking about punishing Saito when she gets home. Wait a sec, there we go. Louise is thinking about nobles, corruption, undercover work. Bad thoughts about being a commoner. Some mission to go undercover as a commoner, stalk a noble, and see if he's corrupt. Smoking out the rats, it sounds like."

"A litmus test for corruption? Makes sense," Tails thought back, subconsciously nodding. "The higher-ups probably all clean up and dress up around the Princess, but get away with all sorts of nasty stuff when her back is turned, like that Count and Siesta."

"I don't know those names, but I'm probably guessing it wasn't good. Excessive taxes on a girl's family or somethin’?"

"Some creepy old dude tried to take a friend of ours as a personal mistress. Broke into his place and did some bartering to set her free. Traded her for a porn magazine, of all things."

"Yup, that sounds like a noble's idea of fun."

"Tails, why are you concentrating so hard?" Kirche asked, interrupting Tails' train of thought. He hadn’t noticed that he’d slipped into a deep-thinking state of meditation-like silence while talking to Ring in his head. Even his breathing had slowed considerably, as if he was trying to be stealthy.

"Oh, uhh, if I concentrate really hard, I can actually hear the Princess, Saito, and Louise talking in there. Big ear benefits," Tails bluffed, pointing at his large fuzzy ears. It wasn't exactly a lie, because he did have better hearing than humans, but he definitely couldn't hear anyone inside. There were too many tapestries and other ornamental stuff dampening the stone building's natural cave-like echo.

"Cool What are they talking about? I'm sure it's some juicy new quest that we aren't invited on, isn't it? Come on, spill! We might get a slice of the action!" Kirche prodded.

"No, that would be a breach in trust between the Princess and me. She wanted it confidential for a reason, I'm sure," Tails replied in a cool tone. A few more minutes passed as the three sat silently, waiting for Louise and Saito to return. Finally, the two emerged from the throne room, the private conference at an end.

“So, what’s going on?” Kirche asked, excitedly

Louise shook her head. "We'll be spending some time in town, so you guys head on home without us. Work for the Princess, just us two."

"Fine." Tabitha said, turning to head back to the gate without another word. Tails took off down the hall after her, with Kirche close behind. Outside, Sylphid was happily playing with the friendly guards, waiting for its’ master to return. The guards promptly returned to their posts as Tails hopped up on Sylphid’s back behind Kirche and Tabitha. With a blast of Sylphid’s massive wings, the three were airborne and quickly leaving the castle behind.

'So, what do we do now? Summer break is almost here, so I suppose I should start organizing a trip," Kirche asked, in hopes of eliciting some sort of conversation from the silent blue-haired girl.

"Wait, summer break? I've only been here for a few days!' Tails said.

"Yeah. Summoning Familiars happens toward the end of the school year, as a sort of summary of the year's experience. It's pretty much considered a reward for doing well for the year," Kirche explained.

"Interesting. So where do you guys go for summer?" Tails asked.

"Most people go home. I'm debating whether I want to go back to Germania or not, since I left behind too many would-be suitors for marriage," Kirche said with a slight note of exasperation.

"Cool! Tabitha, what about you?"

"Home. Gallia," Tabitha said.

"Say, Tabitha, could I come with you instead? It might be better for me to stay away from home with all the men I left there," Kirche asked.

Tabitha nodded, taking Sylphid into a slight dive. A flock of birds streaked by overhead, flying in the opposite direction in a V formation.

"Kirche, why don’t you want to go see your family? Are the guys really that big of an issue back home?" Tails asked.

"Well, yeah, I suppose,” she conceded, a brief smile crossing her lips. “I come from a family that composes a large part of the Germanian military's upper division. Germania is known for their women, beer, and military, so lots of men move to Germania hoping to find a wife or work their way into the military there. Being part of both makes me… very desirable to would-be suitors, to say the least. That's part of the reason I came here, besides trying to become a better wizard.”

“Huh. What about you, Tabitha?”

Tails’ question was met with total silence, bringing the conversation to an abrupt end. The rest of the flight passed in relative silence, save for the whistle of the rushing wind in Tails’ ears. Soon, the Academy came into view, the colorful roofs of the dormitory towers visible for quite a distance. Sylphid slowly began to descend to the grassy fields below, coming to a halt outside the archway of the Academy’s main gate.

Tails hopped down from the blue dragon’s back, taking a few steps back. "Hey guys, I'm going to go work in the workshop for a while,” he announced. “I'll catch up with you two for dinner, alright?"

"Wait, you don't want to grab some lunch? I'm sure there is still food being served," Kirche called after Tails. However, he was already long gone for the workshop both physically and mentally, ready to get to work. "I need to get on those hangar hydraulics, if I’m going to get the X-Tornado in here before someone finds it," he thought.

Stepping into the wooden shack, he took a last look outside before closing the door and making his way over to the trapdoor. Dropping down to his workshop, he lit the few candles he’d left on the metal floor from earlier and threw himself at his work, quickly assembling the 3D printer kit from his toolbox and prepping it for liquid metal. He plugged up his HUD device with a short cable, uploading a digital checklist of parts that the HUD queued for printing. The handheld device listed out all of the types and amounts of materials he would need to complete the project, saving the list into a text document he could later access as he scrolled through the total list. Setting the device down, he engaged his T-Buster's plasma cutter and began cutting slots in the metal walls where the lift hydraulics would go, slowly working his way around the room to cut out the elevator frame straight from the thick metal. He also cut out slots in the ceiling for where he wanted to install basic lights made from Power Rings, delicately cutting holes in the metal without knocking down too much dirt. Thankfully, Professor Colbert found a checklist that Tails had left for him of basic materials to alchemize, so Tails was able to get to work creating the lights immediately. Drafting out a small blueprint with the HUD’s stylus, the planned dimmable lights would be small devices made from a Power Ring and a small circuit built onto a wooden “breadboard” style motherboard, backed with a sheet of copper that would be cut into the circuit paths. "When I get the chance to refine some oil, I'll change them to plastic." Tails thought. “First priority is to get it working and wirelessly controllable with some of the spare parts in the toolbox. Maybe even make them dimmable.”

* * *

 

Hours passed working under the light of the few candles, until finally Tails was able to finish and install several Power Rings onto the wooden circuits, jerry-rigged with spare wireless controllers from the Tornado’s parts kit to regulate the Rings’ output. With a tap of a button on his wristcomm, the dimly glowing Power Rings mounted into the ceiling burst into light.

Tails had an issue, however. "I don't have enough Power Rings on hand to power all four hydraulics queued up in the printer, so moving the X Tornado in will have to wait until I can generate them all," Tails thought. He decided to build a basic wooden tool rack and work bench, so he went outside to cut some lumber, shaping it to size to form the components of a basic table with his plasma cutter. Carrying the lumber back down to his workshop piece by piece, he was able to quickly assemble it into rough-hewn tables with the help of nails, printed from the metal he’d cut out of the walls for the hydraulics. He also borrowed some chain from Mr. Colbert's workshop upstairs, and a large swath of canvas from what looked to be a wagon cover. Wrapping the ends of the long, rectangular sheet of canvas around two sturdy wooden beams, he punched two holes in the wood and inserted the chain into the wood. He ran the chain along the length of the canvas and out through the other piece of wood, splitting the length of chain into two equally-sized pieces. He then melted two small holes in the wall at the corner of the room near the ladder with his T-Buster, letting the molten metal drip down the wall until there was enough room.

Promptly cooling the liquid metal down with a small, handheld fire extinguisher from his toolbox, he inserted the ends of the chain into the hole and gently melted the metal just above the hole, allowing the liquid steel to backfill around the chains’ ends, repeating the process for the other end. Giving the liquid metal one final douse from the extinguisher, he gingerly sat on the hammock to test its’ strength. Satisfied with a job well done, he laid back on the hammock and raised his T-Buster up, withdrawing a fresh Power Ring and setting it aside. “The hammock was a great invention, right up there beside air conditioning and lightbulbs,” he thought as he stretched out over the worn canvas.

“I gotta hand it to ya, that was pretty darn smart. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a bed like that before,” Ring replied in the fox’s head. "Or those lights. I still don't get how it works, but it was totally awesome to watch."

“Well, make do with what you’ve got, I suppose,” Tails replied. “The bed wasn’t my invention. Anyway, I’m gonna take a nap. Wake me up if something’s going on I need to worry about.” Shuffling about one more time, he pulled up his wristcomm and dimmed the lights, slowly drifting into sleep.


	21. Season 1 Chapter 21

CHAPTER 21:

Tails woke up, a bit groggy from the long nap. He rolled out of the hammock and crawled up the ladder, stepping out the workshop into the evening air. Taking a deep breath of fresh air, he could catch gentle wafts of the scent of food rolling out of the kitchen as the wait staff prepared the dining hall for dinner.

"Crap, I was asleep waaay too long," Tails said to himself, rubbing his eyes. He worked his way over to the dining hall, plopping himself down in a chair next to a random group of students. The entire group of students looked over at him, confused that a familiar was not only sitting at their table, but had let himself in. "Uhh, you know this dining hall is for students, right? Familiars sit outside and wait for their masters to feed them," a snarky student declared, obviously annoyed at Tails' presence.

Tails simply ignored the boy, filling up a plate of food and making short work of it. The group of students went back to their meal and did their best to avoid provoking him at that point, fearing a fight. Cleaning off his plate and wiping his mouth clean with one of the ornate fabric napkins set out on the table, he handed his dirty dishes to a young man in black and white waiter's clothes who was busy tending to a cart of used plates. He made his way across campus to the blue-roofed dorm tower, climbing through the several floors of stairs to Tabitha's room where he'd decided to spend the night.

Gently opening the door and finding the candle-lit room empty, he stepped inside and plopped down on the folded bed sheets at the foot of Tabitha's bed. He noticed a book on Tabitha's night stand next to her bed; bored, his curiosity forced him back to his feet to take a look. He picked the hard-cover novel up and observed the artwork on the front, a detailed depiction of a knight in armor standing before a fierce fire-breathing dragon. Interested, he took a seat on Tabitha's bed and flipped open to a random page, musing over the language. "It looks a little like French, but that wasn't a language I learned back on Earth," he thought as he browsed through the walls of text, noting each ornate piece of artwork or illuminated manuscript at the start of each chapter. "Too bad. Might've been a good read."

The door creaked open, catching the fox's attention. Tabitha silently stepped inside, shutting the door behind her.

"Hey Tabitha. Sorry, was just looking at your book. Hope I didn't make you lose your place or something," Tails said, hopping to his feet and setting the novel back on the nightstand. Receiving a silent nod from the blue-haired girl, he walked back over to his bedspread and laid down, kicking off his shoes. Tabitha quickly undressed and donned a sky-blue nightgown, gently waving her staff to magically extinguish the candles around the room save the reading light on her nightstand before sliding into bed. Tails busied himself fiddling with a hologram screen on his T-Buster, messing with the diagnostic tools to check if the machine was running as smoothly as he'd hoped.

What seemed like an eternity passed before Tabitha finally put her novel down, took off her glasses, and blew out her reading candle. As the room slipped into darkness, Tails shut his eyes in some hopeless attempt to get to sleep, knowing well that there was little hope he'd be able to sleep after his extended afternoon nap. Waiting until Tabitha was fully asleep, he put his shoes back on and slowly crept to the door, opening it slowly to prevent the un-lubricated hinges from giving away his departure. He was just about to close the door behind him when he heard a rustling sound from inside. Tails poked his head back into the room, watching as Tabitha slowly devolved into nervous twitching and mumbling as a result of her chronic nightmares.

"Crap, I can't leave her like that. She'll never get any good sleep that way…" Tails thought.

"Bring her down here, bro. I could use some company, and I might be able to help," Ring said in Tails' mind.

Remembering where he left the talking scimitar, Tails rolled his eyes at his own forgetfulness. "Oh crap, yeah, I left you down there after my nap. Yeah, hang on, I'll bring her down." He crept over to the foot of the bed and picked up the pile of bedsheets he'd normally sleep on, setting them and her glasses and staff on top of Tabitha before picking her up. Remembering to pick up a pillow with his tails, he worked his way down the stairs and out across the lawn to Professor Colbert's workshop. Struggling to nudge open the trapdoor to his workshop with is foot, he took a look down the hole and suddenly realized the mistake in his plan. "Crud, how do I get her down there without waking her?" he thought.

"Gimme a sec, I got it," Ring replied. Suddenly, a blue energy shield enveloped Tabitha and the bed sheets, rising from Tails' grip. "Head on down, and I'll bring her down to you."

Nodding, Tails scrambled down the ladder and tossed the pillow he'd been carrying between his tails onto the hammock. Watching as Tabitha floated down the ladder, still fully asleep, he reached out and took hold of her once more as the blue shield slowly dissipated. He set her down on the hammock, propping her head up on top of the pillow and spreading out the bed sheets over her. Setting her glasses and staff on the floor next to the wall, he watched helplessly as Tabitha's dreams slowly took over her body once more in fits of movement and mumbling.

"Want me to do some dream therapy for her?" Ring asked.

Tails shot the blue-ish scimitar an odd look. "Dream therapy? What's that?"

"I told you that I practice voice acting and ventriloquy at one point, right? Anyways, she's clearly having nightmares about something to do with her mother. Perhaps I can get in her dreams and say a few comforting things in the voice of her mom."

The fox nodded, looking over at his 3D printer. Several metal parts lay next to the box-like chassis, a product of the printer's auto-eject function clearing the printing tray for the next task. "Do whatever you have to do to keep her from waking up," he replied, walking over to the machine to confirm that it was done working. "Looks like the printer's done. I'm gonna be making a bit of noise when I fire up the pneumatics and get the X Tornado in here, so whatever helps would be great."

Tails took another Power Ring out of his T-Buster, adding it to the two sitting next to the hammock. Inspecting the cluttered pile of printed metal objects, he gingerly picked up the parts and set them on his workbench, doing his best to keep the noise down. An hour flew by as he assembled the hydraulic lifts, mounted them into the elevator frame he’d cut earlier, and filling them with water. Checking his T-Buster one final time, he pulled out another, freshly-generated Power Ring and inserted it into the port of one of the hydraulic system’s motors. He creeped over to the hammock and picked up the other Power Rings he’d generated yesterday, making his way around the room to insert them into the other four lift motors.

“That should do it,” Tails thought as he stepped back to admire his work. Cycling through the menu of options on his wristcomm to the radio transmitter, he punched in the frequency of the lift motor’s receivers and saved it as a speed-dial button before giving it a press. With a muted whirr of the pumps working hard and the crackle of displaced dirt, the lift slowly began to rise. Dirt fell through the gaps between the wall and ceiling of the lift as the elevator rose, the night sky slowly appearing over the edge of the grassy lawn above him. As the elevator locked into position at ground level, he stepped off and turned around to look at the square mound of grass-topped dirt above the elevator. “Hopefully the roots of the grass will keep me from having to build a retaining wall,” he thought as he turned back to the Academy’s main gate and took off. Skating across the field with his rocket shoes, he quickly arrived at the forest’s edge where he’d stashed the X Tornado.

Brushing off the foliage, Tails popped the canopy with the manual latch and took a seat at the controls. A few buttons fired up the turbines as he gently pushed forward on the control stick, sending the craft trundling forward in Walker mode. Carefully navigating the craft through the main gate of the Academy, he walked the aircraft across the outer lawn of the Academy to the waiting elevator. Tails hopped out of the plane as it went about re-arranging itself into flight mode, listening to the satisfying rush of compressed water out of the cylinders as the platform began it’s slow descent back into the ground. As the lift came to a sudden stop, he walked over to his toolbox and brought it over to the Tornado, collecting his HUD device from the 3D printer as he went. He gave the plane a scan with the HUD and began maintenance work on the plane, going about his work with newfound enthusiasm.

* * *

 

Just finishing up the repairs on the damaged landing gear, Ring rang out in Tails’ mind. “Shit, partner, we got problems. I must’ve messed up, she’s waking up.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Tails replied as he packed up his tools and withdrew a micromesh cloth and a block of polish. “It was probably just the noise I made that woke her up, that’s all.” He quietly watched as Tabitha sat up in bed, wobbling in the hammock. Setting the cloth and polish back in his toolbox, he hopped down from the wing of the aircraft. "Hey, Tabitha. Welcome to my little hideaway. Sorry it's not stocked with the usual amenities, I haven't had time to build an icebox to keep food. You got the midnight munchies? I can grab you something from the kitchen if you like," he asked.

Tabitha shook her head as the fox walked over, taking a seat on the side of the hammock. "Hey, I overheard a bit of what you were talking about in your sleep. I know it's hard to lose someone you love. Hang in there, alright?" Tails continued. Tabitha lowered her head, a single tear glistening in the yellowish light of the Power Rings overhead rolling down her face. Unsure of what to do, Tails just sat quietly and waited. “If you wanna tell me about it, I’m all ears. Well, at least ten percent ears," Tails joked, trying to cheer the blue-haired girl up. Tabitha collected herself, wiping her tears on her nightgown sleeve.

"Thank you," Tabitha whispered, nodding.

"No problem, it’s what friends are for,” Tails replied. “By the way, if you ever want to crash here, get away from the world and all, you’re always welcome to drop by. This is where I'll be mostly when I'm hiding from Louise or just working on the X Tornado here," he explained, pointing to the ladder near the hammock. "This place is right under Professor Colbert's workshop. That ladder over there leads up to a false floor in his place. Preferably, keep this place secret. The fewer that know about it, the less likely it’ll be that people find me when I don't want them to. I'm gonna get back to work, but you’re welcome to stay the night if you like. I can also take you back up to your room, if you’d prefer."

Tabitha shook her head, watching the X Tornado with her ever-observant eyes. Tails noticed her obsession, cracking a small grin. "You wanna come take a look?" he asked. Tabitha nodded and stepped out of the hammock, making her way over to the Tornado, barefoot on the cold steel floor. Tails clambered up on the wing and helped her up. She stood on the slanted wing, observing the various control surfaces of the wing, the sleek surfaces of the turbines, and the various panels of the cockpit and co-pilot seats.

"Hey, I've got an idea. Here," Tails said, gesturing to the copilot's seat as he popped the canopy open with the mechanical latch. He helped Tabitha down into the seat and hopped into the pilot’s seat, turning the Tornado back on. He used his wristcomm to shut the canopy and raise the platform, the elevator soundlessly sliding upward into the night sky. When the platform was raised and locked in position, Tails donned his headset and slowly revved up the engines, taxiing out of the hangar and through the main gate. Once out into the smooth grassy fields, he gestured for Tabitha to put on her headphones and closed the hangar lift with his wristcomm. Pushing the throttle nearly as far forward as it would go, Tails gunned the turbines, watching as the X Tornado picked up speed over the rough dirt road as the powerful turbines roared behind him. The automatic seatbelt clamped down around him, securing him to the back of his seat as the aircraft quickly took to the air, accelerating ever faster. With a dull crack, the Tornado broke the sound barrier, the airspeed indicator not hesitating in its’ relentless increase. Within seconds, the aircraft was above the clouds and headed ever higher. Tails looked up at the stars above and admired their untainted beauty through the crystal-clear atmosphere. “You just don’t get views like this from the ground back home,” he thought, smiling.

Over the speakers of his headset, he could hear a soft-spoken digital voice alert him to the activation of a special part of the X Tornado’s arsenal of tech, the Chaos Radiation Drive. "Congratulations, Tabitha! You're the first human to leave the planet," Tails said into his headset’s microphone. Looking over his shoulder, he watched as Tabitha observed everything her eyes could take in, from the vast multitude of stars to the two large moons dead ahead. "We should be arriving at the first moon in… a few minutes or so, with afterburner. We won't be able to walk on it without proper space gear, unfortunately, but we should still be able to get pretty close."

Approaching the celestial body, the X Tornado hurtled around the moon, barely twenty feet above the surface of the pale pink soil. “Must be a slight tinge of magnesium or lithium compound crystals in the rocks,” Tails thought. He maneuvered the speeding craft along the contours of the planet, bringing the craft so close that the CR Drive thrusters on the bottom of the craft began pushing around loose moon dust.

Pulling away from the pink-tinged moon, Tails looked over his shoulder and saw Tabitha let out a small yawn, covering her mouth with her hand. "We'll head back in a bit, so you can get a full night's sleep. You still have classes tomorrow and all," he said. Tabitha gave a slight nod, her eyes still fixated on the distant stars.

Steering back toward the blue-and-green planet below, the X Tornado began re-entry back toward the Academy, where he had set a digital home beacon geo-tag. After what seemed like ages of gliding with flaps deployed to bleed speed, Tails finally brought the X Tornado into a hover in Walker mode over the Academy. He called forth the elevator with his wristcomm and walked the aircraft onto the elevator. When the Tornado was securely stopped and inside the hangar underground, he popped the canopy and hopped up onto the airframe, still warm from re-entering the atmosphere.

"Careful, the hull could be hot after re-entry," Tails said as he helped Tabitha down onto the cold metal of the workshop floor.

Tabitha walked back over to the hammock and gathered her sheets and other belongings. "Goodnight. Thank you,” she said, her voice hardly breaking the silence of the cold, boxy room. She made her way up the ladder and out of sight, her departure only denoted by the sound of the trapdoor opening and closing.

Happy, Tails got back to his maintenance work, working over the now warm-to-the-touch hull of the Tornado with the block of polish and rag. The golden surface of the craft took on a newfound shine as he worked, glimmering in the yellowish light.

"So, where'd you guys go? She seemed pretty ecstatic," Ring said out loud, breaking the silence

"Ecstatic? Her? She certainly didn't show it” Tails replied, wiping up the canopy glass with a dose of ammonia-based cleaner. “I flew her to the moons and back, just for grins. Great view up there, lots of constellations I wish I could explore. Large-scale pollution of the modern age really kills the views from the surface.” The fox let out a yawn that filled the silent room, reminding him how tired he was.

"Sounds fun. I almost wouldn’t believe you if you… weren’t you, I guess. From her thoughts, I'd say she likes you,” Ring stated.

Tails shot the blued scimitar a dirty look. "Ventriloquist, yes; Talking sword, yes; love doctor, no,” he said, shaking his head. “She's a human, I’m a familiar. She was just really bent out of shape over her nightmares and was glad to take a break. Besides, I've already got someone back home.”

"Already, bro? After you just blew up your previous girl from orbit? You've gotta work on your dedication, bro."

Tails’ fist clenched tight around the micromesh rag. Trembling slightly, he could feel his eyes start to water. "It’s not like that. When Cosmo died, she put out a single seed. I think… I KNOW, that it’s her."

"Man, for a smart kid like yourself, you really do get obsessed. Seeds create new plants, not recreate old ones. You know that."

"…she's a Seedrian. They're different. Their seeds are different, too. Trust me, it works differently."

"Whatever, man. I'll leave you to it,” Ring replied. “I'm sure you know what you're doing. Just… don't get obsessed. It's not what she would have wanted. People go insane over that shit, do all sorts of harmful things to their friends. You just be careful."

Tails sighed, the tension in his body slowly unfurling. “Right… thanks for the reality check.” He promptly finished up with the polish and window cleaner before starting to clean out the turbine exhausts, wiping out the light film of carbon fouling to reveal the polished golden metal below. Feeling himself slowly starting to drift off to sleep, he tossed down the rag and made his way over to the canvas hammock, dimming the lights before drifting off to sleep.


	22. Season 1 Chapter 22

CHAPTER 22

“Hey, Miles. Wake up. Sun’s been up for hours now,” Ring declared, snapping the yellow fox out of his dreams. Tails sat up in his hammock, massaging his eyes open in the dim yellow light of the workshop. He gently bit his tongue to generate some saliva in hopes of washing away the taste of morning breath as he hopped out of bed, stretching out after a solid night’s sleep. “Man, that felt good! Not sleeping a floor is a nice change of pace,” he thought, blindly fiddling with his wristcomm to turn up the workshop lights. Above him, he could hear footsteps on the wooden floor of Professor Colbert’s workshop. “He must already be at work.”

Stretching out one final time, he began climbing up the ladder to the wooden room above, gently pushing aside the trapdoor as he poked his head out. Professor Colbert stood a few feet away from him, lost in his work as he gazed into a liquid-filled glass vial with un-human-like focus. As Tails stepped out of the hole in the ground and replaced the false floor trapdoor, the bald man lost his focus; he leaped back at the sudden appearance of the young Mobian, nearly losing his grip on the vial. "Good lord, Miles, you scared me!” Professor Colbert stated, regaining his posture. “I almost dropped this test. How long have you been down there?"

Looking out the dirty window near the door to try and get a sense of the time, he shrugged in defeat. “Dunno. What time it is right now?"

Professor Colbert picked up a small circular device, flipping open a metal cover to reveal a set of dials. The man muttered under his breath, gently setting his test down before scrambling to collect several scattered papers into a small courier bag. “Almost noon, unfortunately,” he replied when he’d finished gathering his papers. “Almost missed preparing for class. Thank you for reminding me. By the way, were you sleeping down there?"

“Yep,” Tails replied with a grin, letting out a slight yawn. “Got the place pretty decked out now. You should come down and take a look.”

Looking back to his watch-like device, Colbert set his bag back on the work table. “Very well. I’m sure the students would appreciate the extra time if I show up late.” He followed the yellow fox down through the trapdoor, slowly climbing down the wall by the cold metal handholds. Stepping off of the last footing of the makeshift ladder, he turned around. His jaw dropped as he feasted his eyes on the array of technology in front of him. "What is this? These tools, that… thing!” he remarked, jogging over to the X Tornado. “It looks like… I’m not sure, but these are clearly wings. What is it?"

Tails grinned. “That’s my space-capable jet, the X Tornado. I'm surprised I didn't wake you and half of the campus up last night. It was pretty noisy getting it in and out for the flight last night. Flew to the moon with Tabitha. Beautiful views."

Professor Colbert turned back and looked at the fox in disbelief, trying to determine if he was joking. Deciding that Tails was speaking the truth, he pointed to the ceiling. “And those cracks in the ground are your doing?”

“Yeah, sorry about that. The whole platform the Tornado is sitting on raises out of the ground so I can take off,” Tails replied, pointing to the exposed hydraulics built into the lift. “Pretty neat, huh?"

“Absolutely!” Professor Colbert said enthusiastically. He circled around the craft, eyes wide in amazement as he took in every detail and angle of the sleek golden craft. “What a beautiful piece of technology! How does it work? Can we, perhaps…?” he asked, trailing off as he nodded to the sky.

“Sure! I don’t see why not. Assuming Headmaster Osmond doesn’t mind.”

Professor Colbert looked relieved. "Very well, I will arrange with Osmond to allow a research trip at your earliest convenience."

"It's up to you when we go. She's ready for flight at any time. No warp drives, so we’d have to stick to local celestial bodies. I’m assuming that’s alright with you?” Tails replied jokingly.

“Absolutely, yes! To think, being the first man to travel to the moon! Something only of dreams and legends. To think of the things we can teach… Classes!” Colbert exclaimed, suddenly remembering his duties. “Miles, I need to run. Perhaps we can talk later today?” Not bothering to wait for a response, the balding man darted for the trapdoor, scaling the ladder with surprising speed. 

Tails followed him up the ladder and watched as he collected his bag and staff before following him out the door. Hungry, Tails veered off for the kitchen as Colbert jogged off toward the lecture hall. He stepped into the bustling kitchen and began working his way around the relatively empty kitchen, assembling a small breakfast of apples, cheese and the remains of a thin-sliced breakfast ham. Making short work of the meal and cleaning up his dishes, he stepped outside into the warm morning light, re-energized and ready to go about his day. “Problem is, I feel like there's nothing to do, since I don't have many raw materials left over for upgrading the Tornado, and I'd need Professor Colbert’s help to get more,” he thought. “Louise and Saito are out of town still, so it's not like there is much to do there. Tabitha and Kirche are already in class, so I can't just walk in on them.”

“Wanna do some mind-reading?” Ring interrupted in the fox’s mind. “Or we could do some practice. I’m still down in the workshop where you left me.”

“Why not? You up for some mind-reading sessions?”

“Who’re we gonna read first? Everyone's bundled up in classrooms so it should be easy to find them.”

“Alright, take a look at Kirche first,” Tails thought. He took a seat against the stone perimeter wall, shutting his eyes and basking in the warm sunlight while he waited for Ring to establish a connection.

“Alright, here we go. Kirche's pretty bored. She notices a lot of guys glancing at her, so she’s acting flirty but is secretly disinterested. Nothing new. Keep watching her?”

“Pick a random target,” Tails thought. “Find something interesting, someone I haven’t met before.”

Ring sat silent for a moment before invading Tails’ mind once more. “alright, here we go. A guy named Frank, or at least that's what his buddy called him. He's thinking about using a spell to light a fly on fire. He’s going for it, he's chanting… he got it. Professor Colbert is pissed. He's getting chewed out hard for using a wand during the final test. Frank is on the defensive, claiming it was interrupting his studies, aaaaand… Colbert bought it, no punishment. Back to boredom, blank mind.”

“Alright, that was hardly sustaining,” Tails replied. “Take a look at Tabitha.”

“You sure about that? You may not like it…”

“Is something wrong?”

“She’s totally blank, not even thinks about the test questions she’s totally acing. Flickering thoughts about you, her mom, her… I don't even know, some other blue-haired guy, related. Someone named Joseph. She definitely doesn't have a good opinion of him; she’s very bitter, in a focused way. Brief thoughts about some mission or other, no major details. Thoughts about class, reading her book, and... back to a blank mind.”

Tails frowned. “Maybe we’ll figure out more about this Joseph guy if I ask around. Can’t ask Tabitha directly, though, if just thinking about the guy really messes her up… Anyway, what about Colbert?”

“He’s pretending to be reading a book, but he can’t stop thinking about your flying machine.”

Suddenly, the sound of a carriage filled the air. Tails’ eyes popped open as two horses trotted through the Academy’s main gate, towing an ornate white carriage. As the carriage driver brought the horses to a halt, the door popped open. Saito and Louise stepped down from the carriage, appearing rather exhausted from hard work. "Hey Tails, whatcha up to?" Saito asked, seeing the yellow fox seated against the stone perimeter wall.

“Hey, Saito,” Tails greeted the Japanese boy, waving at him. “Not much, just waiting for Kirche and Tabitha to get out of their test.”

“Tails, did you do anything remotely useful while we were gone?” Louise asked accusatively.

“I did, but would it really bother you if I didn’t?” Tails retorted, annoyed.

Louise just rolled her eyes and sighed. “Anyway, summer break begins tomorrow, officially. So you have to decide who you are going with for the break. It'll only be a week or so. Not that I trust you with Kirche for that long, but I know I'll have my hands full with this idiot, so you have permission to choose.”

"Well, it turns out Kirche and Tabitha are sticking together for the summer, so I'll be heading with them to Tabitha’s place for the break.”

"Well, if I hear ANYTHING of you being inappropriate, you'll be spending the rest of the year sleeping outside, or in a dungeon cell, whichever I choose at the time. Anyways, what time is it?"

“Eh, beats me,” Tails said with a shrug. “Mr. Colbert told me I woke up at noon, so I'd guess about one, one-thirty maybe?

Louise let out a short sigh of relief. "Great, then lunch is still being served. I'm going to get some food before Colbert has me make up the test. Saito, go to the kitchen and get yourself some food. Meet back in my room in an hour for packing, then you'll be free for the evening."

"Sure…" Saito replied, letting out a long yawn. Tails watched as the boy wandered over to the kitchen and disappeared into the building as Louise headed for the dining hall. “Wonder what kept him up so late,” he thought. “Ah hell, what am I saying, it's probably just Louise,” he added, answering his own question. He hopped up from his seat against the wall and headed for the kitchen. Inside, he took a seat at the work table where Saito was seated, munching on some cold leftovers he’d scrounged up. 

"So, how'd your secret noble-spying mission go?" Tails asked.

Saito just about coughed up his food in surprise. "How'd you know?" he asked in return, wiping his mouth on a dirty dishcloth he’d nicked from the dish-washing area.

"Ring read Louise's mind for me while the Princess explained the mission. We were able to piece together her thoughts to figure out what was going on, mostly because you were too busy thinking about the Princess, and her about you to really focus."

"You're kidding me,” Saito said, dismissing the notion with a shake of his head. “The princess thinking about me? That's a joke."

"No, I'm not kidding you. At least, that’s what Ring told me. He could just be pulling our leg,” Tails replied.

Saito nodded and quickly downed the last of his lunch, setting his dishes aside and washing it all down with a glass of water. "Anyway, back to your question. Depending on who you ask, the mission went well. Louise lost all of our money gambling, so we took up jobs at a maid café kind of deal. More like a bar though, but it worked well as a disguise."

"Wait. You mean to say that you and Louise were… dressed up as maids?" The fox let out a short chuckle at the thought, laughing all the harder when Saito nodded to confirm it. "Thankfully, I was a dishwasher. Only Louise had to dress up,” he added.

"Oh man, that's rich. I bet that was really fun. What bar is this you guys worked at?" Tails asked.

Saito shook his head. "I’m not gonna say, for her dignity and my safety. Anyways, we had a corrupt taxman come in and clear out the bar by force. Louise caught the guy red-handed and used a legal document from the Princess to force him into submission, as well as threats of magic. He tried to pay her off, but she got him and kept the cash as a bonus. We went back to the Princess and told her, and then headed back here. Easy."

"Sounds like it was pretty fun. I can see why the Princess didn't want me going. I don't think I would have fit in too well at a maid bar, for sure,” Tails said with a grin.

"Yeah,” Saito laughed. He hopped up from his seat and took his dishes over to the washing station, dropping them into a stack of dishes yet to be cleaned. “Anyways, I'm gonna go wander around for a bit. It's Louise's night tonight, so I'll see you at least by tonight."

"Yeah, see ya."


	23. Season 1 Chapter 23

CHAPTER 23:

For Tails, the rest of the day passed by smoothly, slowly slipping into the evening before he knew it. Although it was Louise's night to keep Tails, she’d redirected him to Kirche’s room when bedtime rolled around. "I don't need any help packing, since I'll be staying here over the summer. Go help Kirche pack or something and stay with her for the night,” she had instructed him. “I don't want you waking me up when you leave."

Tails made his way over to Kirche's room, where he found her packing a small hardened-leather luggage case. "Need any help with that?" he asked.

"No, I've got it, thanks. Just finished, actually. Flame will carry it for me, since he's taken a liking to the case, as you can tell by the scratches,” she said, nodding toward the case’s scarred leather sides. “He gets pretty possessive of it, like a toy." The large red salamander, snapping out of his nap at the mention of his name, hopped up and trundled over to the case, nosing it shut and resting his head on it as if to claim it as his own. "Good boy, Flame! Thanks for that!" Kirche said, bending down to give the giant salamander a short head rub. Flame belched a short spurt of fire from his mouth, growling in appreciation of the comment.

"Well, I know it's not your night, Louise doesn’t want me sleeping in her room tonight. She doesn't want me to wake her up when we leave with Tabitha tomorrow. Do you mind if I spend the night?" Tails asked.

"Not at all! I dropped off your bedsheets with the maids to have them cleaned, so I don’t have them right now. There’s plenty of room to share the bed, though,” she explained. “Don’t worry, nothing weird,” she added with a giggle.

“Well, I guess it’ll work. Thanks," Tails replied warily, kicking off his shoes near the door. He waited facing the wall as Kirche got dressed for bed and climbed in, sliding to the far side of the bed. When she was settled, he walked around and hopped in on the other side, not bothering with the sheets as he spread out over his side of the bed. He flicked his tails out from underneath him and laid them on top of him, shutting his eyes.

Curious, Kirche reached out and gave his right tail a brief stroke. "Aww, it's so soft! How do you keep fur like that? I can hardly keep my hair that soft, and it's not all over to get muddy," Kirche cooed, playing with his irresistibly soft fur on his tail.

"It’s just fur. It’s different from hair in texture, I guess. It'll get fluffier and softer in the winter as I change coats, but becomes waaaay harder to keep clean if I land in mud or something," Tails stated, not bothering to open his eyes.

Kirche dragged one of his tails over her, running her hand over its’ surface. "That's sooo cool! How do you even fly with these?"

Tails sighed, realizing that Kirche was nowhere near ready to shut up, much less go to bed. "It involves some aerodynamics you might not understand. Physics based stuff, same way a wing works. Bird wings, dragon wings, plane wings, anything of that sort. I use muscle strength to shape my tails when I fly, a bit like a wing, so they become beneficially aerodynamic and generate thrust when spun. I could explain how Chaos energy plays into it, but I think we have a long day of travelling tomorrow. There’ll be plenty of time to explain it then.”

"Right, I'll hold you to that,” Kirche said, letting go of the fox’s tail. “Goodnight."

* * *

 

The next day slowly arrived, warm light flowing through the thin curtain over the room’s only window. Feeling something being dragged across his stomach, Tails’ eyes shot open as he scrambled out of bed in fear of a spider or something else equally disgusting. Seeing Kirche’s hand retreat to her side, he let out a sigh of relief. “Just spreading out during her sleep,” he thought. Now thoroughly awake, he turned his attention to the window, gently pulling the curtain aside to peek outside. Down on the lawns by the main gate, he noticed some students already boarding carriages with various emblems on them. "Most likely students' personal carriages from their family to bring them home over the summer," he guessed.

Behind him, Kirche groaned and rubbed her eyes. "Morning, Tails. Is Tabitha down there in the courtyard?" she asked, sitting up in bed.

"No, not yet," Tails replied. On cue, three knocks rang out from the door. "Coming!" he called, making his way around the end of the bed, past Flame where the salamander slept spread out on the floor. Pulling the door open, he found Tabitha patiently waiting in the hallway, her staff and book in hand. "Hey Tabitha! Kirche's just now waking up, we'll be ready to go in a minute. Did you already grab breakfast?" he asked.

Tabitha nodded, peering into the room beyond the yellow twin-tailed fox. Tails stepped aside as she strode into the room, turning to watch as Kirche stumbled around attempting to get dressed, still half asleep. "Not always one hundred percent graceful, I suppose,” he thought with a grin.

After waiting for Kirche to get dressed, the trio strolled down to the dining hall where a buffet of breakfast foods was still being served. Making short work of his assembled plate of food, Tails slipped away to his workshop to collect Ring while Kirche and Tabitha went about feeding their familiars.

“Mornin’, Tails,” Ring greeted the fox as he dropped down to the workshop floor. “So, summer break begins today it seems?”

“It looks like it,” Tails replied as he picked up the sword and his leather sheath rig, cinching it tight around his waist. “We’re headed to Tabitha’s place for a short visit, it seems.”

“Sounds fun. Derflinger’s been nothing but a whiny old fogey all day, being stuck behind with Saito. Then again, I can’t blame him if he’s stuck around Louise all the time, either.”

Tails nodded in agreement as he climbed up the ladder, making his way back outside. From the doorway of the upper workshop, he could see Kirche and Tabitha waiting beside a white carriage attached to two massive stallions, complete with shaggy fur-coated hooves and thick manes. The driver looked old, yet strong and well-weathered to the job; his high-end suit gave him the appearance of a personal chauffeur, someone who was used to working around nobles more often than the average carriage driver.

"Hey Tabitha, why didn't we ride Sylphid? I'm sure we could be there much faster if we did," Kirche asked as Tails made his way over. Tabitha simply shook her head in response, stating "Sickness.”

"Makes sense. It's probably a lot of work, flying us three. We just fed her breakfast, so she might get sick exerting herself so much on a full stomach," Tails added. "We could have just flown in the X Tornado, but I'd rather not show that to the world yet. Besides, nowhere to store it at Tabitha’s house," he thought.

"So, what's home like for you two ladies?" Ring asked, popping out of his sheath as Tails followed the two women into the carriage, taking a seat on the plush upholstered benches. As soon as Tails closed the door behind him, the carriage lurched forward.

"Forests, lots of rain, lots of military parades. Great beer, large families, parties and other occasions. Since almost everything goes to the military, the focus is mostly on men, as usual," Kirche summed up.

"Quiet," Tabitha mumbled as she buried herself in her book, setting her staff against a small box mounted to the wall of the carriage across from the door. To Tails’ intrigue, the box appeared to be full of books and novels of all sizes and colors. All of the titles appeared to be in the same French-esque language he’d seen in the novel Tabitha kept with her and was reading now. Putting the books and the chauffeur driver together, a lightbulb came on in Tails’ head. “Must be a personal driver from Tabitha’s home. She probably keeps it stocked with reading material for the long ride,” he thought, his focus slowly drifting off to the landscape passing by the carriage door’s glass window.

* * *

 

The better part of the day slowly crawled along as Tails watched the world go by, long after Kirche and Tabitha had succumbed to a “short” nap. The open, boulder-dotted grassy fields and broken-up forests had slowly given way to the thicker and darker woodland that surrounded them now. In the distance, high ice-topped peaks appeared where the treetops parted enough for Tails to see through. “I bet Sonic would love to go spend time running up and down those mountains. He might’ve even asked me to build him a basic snowboard,” the fox thought, lost in a daydream about his old friend many worlds away.

Suddenly, the cart lurched to a halt. Snapping out of his daydream, Tails could see a wall of stone running through the woods, blocking their path. With the grating sound of steel hinges, a heavy wrought-iron gate swung wide before the carriage. Inside, the woodlands continued as thick as ever, yet in a much more manicured fashion. Picturesque secret ponds and gardens peered out from deep behind the treeline, complete with manicured grassy paths through the bushes that connected them to the main road the carriage rode upon.

"Hey, guys, I think we're here," Tails said, gently shaking Kirche and Tabitha awake. “We just passed through the front gate, I think.”

"Wow, Tabitha! I didn't know your family had such a large place! This is fantastic!" Kirche exclaimed, peeking over Tails’ shoulder to take a look. With a brief shake, the dirt paths gave way to marble-white roads of smooth, perfectly square flagstone. The carriage shortly pulled to a stop in front of what appeared to be a large mansion, surrounded by well-kept gardens of beautiful flowers. The driver hopped down from his seat and passed by the window to open the carriage door for his passengers, waiting patiently without a word for the three occupants to step out.

Stepping down from the carriage behind Tabitha and Kirche, Tails could see several maids and butlers in classical black-and-white servants’ attire waiting patiently at the door. "Welcome home, Miss Charlotte!” a bald-headed middle-aged butler announced as he made his way forward, followed by his fellow servants to collect the girls’ bags. “We’ve been eagerly waiting for your return. I presume your trip went well?” Tabitha responded with no more than a nod as the burly, well-dressed men disappeared into the manor with her bags.

Eyes wide, Kirche let out a short gasp. "Tabitha, are you part of… Gallia’s royal family?" Kirche asked in surprise as she gazed at an emblem adorning the archway of the manor’s main door.

Not bothering to answer the question, Tabitha walked off for the mansion, the tip of her wooden staff clacking on the thick flagstones. Kirche and Tails quickly caught up, following her into the main reception room of the manor. With her staff, Tabitha motioned toward several thick-cushioned chairs and sofas in the center of the reception hall. "Wait here," she commanded softly as she walked off toward an open doorway to the left, disappearing into the further hallway. Kirche and Tails took a seat on a sofa, their gazes wandering around the room. Without a sound, the butler that had led them in sat down in a chair opposite the sofa. A maid brought over a tray of tea and madeleines and set them on a large, finely carved wooden table between them before retreating to her post in some distant room.

"So, what's going on? What's with Tabitha? Why did you call her miss Charlotte?" Kirche questioned, breaking the eerie silence of the large hall.

"She hasn't told you? Not surprising," the butler said. "Her true name is Charlotte Hélène d'Orléans. Tabitha is the name of a doll that her mother has taken a fancy to. An alias for protecting herself during her travels, no doubt."

"Wait, her mother's alive?" Tails asked in surprise. “I mean, I thought…”

The well-dressed man sighed, lowering his gaze to the floor. "Yes, most definitely alive… just not entirely present. Her husband, Sir Charles, was due to become the king of Gallia. However, as is with Gallia’s age-old history of sibling rivalry, his brother saw himself as a better fit for the throne. He assassinated the would-be King Charles and took the throne for himself. He then attempted to finish the bloodline of the true king by poisoning miss Charlotte with a magic potion that drives its victim into insanity."

Tails nodded, releasing a tense sigh. "I'm guessing Tabitha's mother saw the potion and took it in her stead, to save her?"

"Correct, young familiar. I’m surprised you figured it out, as it’s been a relatively well-kept secret to keep dissent from spreading,” the butler remarked. “Since the potion had failed, King Joseph has since made miss Charlotte a knight of the realm, a chevalier. He has been keeping her constantly deployed on exceptionally difficult missions ever since, in hopes that she would die on a quest. However, she's always pulled through. Miss Charlotte, having completed so many quests that there was none Joseph could conjure up without arousing suspicion, was then sent away to the Tristain Magic Academy while Joseph concocted more suicidal quests in secret."

"Wow. What a history!” Kirche exclaimed, mindfully keeping her voice down. Suddenly, a muted shout and the sound of shattering glass echoed down the hallway Tabitha had disappeared into. The red-haired girl glanced back at Tails and the butler with a look of worry. "Should we go check on her?"

"No, it would be best if you left miss Charlotte and her mother alone for now,” the butler replied, a note of sorrow in his voice. “Lady Hélène doesn't take well to newcomers, and after miss Charlotte's prolonged absence at the academy, even she is foreign to her own mother."

Moments later, Tabitha silently walked into the room. Her blue hair was soaked in a dark brown liquid that reeked of alcohol even from where Tails was seated. The three quickly rose to their feet.

"Hey, Tabitha, you ok?” Tails asked, taking a few steps closer “Did someone attack you? I heard some glass break back there. We were worried for a sec.”

Sensing a rising tension, Kirche butted in. "Tabitha, I think I'd like to have a bath to relax some. Do you mind?" she asked.

"I'll show you the way. If you'd follow me, please," the butler replied for her, gesturing to a doorway. He led Kirche to a set of doors on the other side of the reception hall, leaving Tabitha and Tails alone in the foyer.

After a few moments of awkward silence, Tails finally found the words to speak up. "Uhh… I'll go tour the property afterwards, if you don't mind," Tails said.

Tabitha nodded and started walking, leaving Tails to catch up as she ducked into what appeared to be a laundry room filled with washboards and several bathtub-sized containers for washing clothes. She picked up a clean towel from a stack of cloths and went about drying off her hair as Tails patiently watched. The tinkling sound of glass on stone filled the air as shards of sharp crystal fell out of her hair, catching Tails’ attention. He looked up from the fallen glass to catch sight of open cuts on Tabitha’s forehead near her hairline, still dripping blood that had been slowly matting her hair together at the roots.

"Did your mom… throw a glass at you?" Tails quietly asked, afraid of touching on a bad subject. Tabitha nodded.

"That's messed up… we should probably get that looked at,” the fox continued, stepping further into the room to look around for medical supplies. “Where would you guys keep the bandages at?”

Tabitha caught Tails by the arm as he passed by in his search, shaking her head. “It’s fine,” she mumbled. A drop of blood rolled down from the cut on her forehead to the bridge of her nose, descending until it became caught in the corner of her lip like a bloody tear.

Tails looked at her incredulously. “No, not really. Parents don’t throw stuff at…” he trailed off, realizing that where he was going was probably a bad idea. He quickly regained his composition, removing her hand from his arm. “Hey, we heard everything from the butler. I’m sorry to hear all that stuff happened to you. We’re here to help if you need it," Tails said. “If you’re all good, then I’m gonna go for a walk. I'll have Ring keep tabs on you and Kirche while I walk the grounds, so just tell him if you need me for something."

Tabitha nodded. "Dinner, two hours.”

"Right. Will do," Tails said with a nod and a grin. He strolled out of the room and backtracked through the hallway to the reception room, stepping outside through the front door. Adjusting Ring’s sheath, he took off running into the wooded interior of the large stone perimeter, skating freely with his rocket shoes once he was far enough away from the mansion to avoid making a racket.

* * *

 

Two hours passed in the blink of an eye as Tails explored the vast interior of the manor grounds, finding as many secret gardens and reading benches as he could. Checking the time on his wristcomm frequently, he made his way back to the mansion when his time was up, ready for some food. Even several steps outside the main doorway of the manor, fantastic smells of fancy cooking permeated the air that sharpened his appetite even further.

Inside, Tails followed his nose through the halls of the mansion until he found himself in a dining room, a large table dominating the floor space of the hall. The array of maids and butlers who had attended to their bags and brought them tea lined the walls, waiting patiently to fulfill their duties. One younger gentleman stepped out to pull out a chair for Tails, surprising the fox with his sudden movements.

Hardly a few minutes passed before Kirche and Tabitha, her cuts cleaned up and dealt with, soon joined Tails at the end of the table where he was seated. The waiters proceeded to bring out trays of food, carving meats and serving up bowls of soup and salads for their guests with machine-like efficiency. Looking around the room, Tails felt pretty awkward eating under the gaze of the serving staff. Thankfully, partway through the meal, the old butler broke the silence.

"Miss Charlotte, I presume you came home to accept the next quest?" he said, handing a scroll of paper to Tabitha as she picked over her food. She unrolled it and looked it over, not saying a word. "When will you begin?' the butler asked.

"Tomorrow," she replied, setting the rolled parchment aside.

"Very well. Do be careful, Miss Charlotte. We will anticipate your return," the man said, returning to his place against the wall.

"A quest? Sounds like fun! We'll be tagging along, for sure,"" Kirche said.

Tabitha shook her head. "Dangerous," she stated, resolutely.

"Even more reason for us to come! We don't leave friends behind, especially if you are going to be killed by some stupid quest for their evil uncle. The butler told us everything, so we're coming, like it or not," Kirche said in her usual defiant tone.  
"Yeah. Familiars are supposed to protect you, right? Heck, if I’m not your Familiar, I’m at least a friend, right?," Tails added.

Tabitha looked at the two, measuring up their resolve in silence. Finally, she nodded. "Thank you.”

"Anyways, we better get a good night's sleep if we’re gonna do this the right way. You can brief us tomorrow. I'm headed to bed," Kirche declared, setting down her silverware on her empty plate. A maid stepped forward from her station against the wall to collect her dirty dishes as Kirche disappeared into the depths of the mansion. Tabitha soon followed, leaving Tails behind to finish up his meal in silence.

Wiping his mouth on a cloth napkin, he stood up from his seat and made his way to the door. He silently crept around the mansion halls for the better part of a half hour, looking for a free guest bedroom to use for the night without disturbing anyone. Testing a few doors, however, he came across Tabitha’s room. Kirche, now changed into her night gown, was seated in the corner of the room on a chair, watching Tabitha as she slept.

"Couldn't sleep?" Tails asked, stepping into the room.

"Yeah. I just feel so bad for Tabitha," Kirche whispered, her gaze never leaving her sleeping friend. "She's lost everything, and she's reminded by it every day because of what remains of her mom. It's just so… sad. You know?"

Tails nodded. "Yeah, I know. Hey, if you want to go to bed, I can take over watching her. She'll be fine."

"Alright, thanks,” she replied, hopping up from her seat. As she made for the door, she stopped at Tails’ side. “Hey, thanks for backing me up back there,” she whispered. “I thought she might try to keep me from going."

"Yeah, no problem. 'Night."

Kirche stepped out into the hall and slowly shut the door behind her, plunging the room into darkness. Tails pulled up his wristcomm and used the screen’s dim light to navigate his way over to Tabitha’s bedside. He took a seat against the wall, resting his head against his knees. It didn’t take long for Tabitha’s horrid dreams to overtake her once more, eliciting no more than a depressed sigh from Tails. “God, it never stops,” he thought miserably, looking up at his friend as she tossed and turned. “I don’t even think my dreams of Cosmo lasted this long. Then again, it’s not like her problem is done and gone, either…”

“Want me to talk to her again?” Ring said in Tails’ mind.

“Nah, I’ve got this,” the fox replied, slowly standing up without a sound. He kicked off his shoes, undid his sword’s sheath and peeled off his gloves, setting the white synthetic fabric on a nightstand nearby. Taking a seat on the edge of the bed, he laid back on top of the bed and stretched out, setting his right tail on the restless girl’s torso. “It’s okay Tabitha, we’re here. We’ve been there,” he mumbled quietly, waiting for a response. Through the tossing and the turning, her incessant mumbling about her mother died away. She slowly calmed down, latching onto the fox’s tail in a deceptively strong bear hug.

Staring into the darkness above him as he lay, an idea popped into Tails’ head. “Ring, you still there?” he thought.

“Yeah man, what's up?”

“What do you know about magic potions? Any way to cure one?”

“Depends on the potion. Things like potions of strength or sickness wear off over time, usually anywhere from minutes to hours, maybe a day. Potions that mess with emotions, like depression or love potions can take years to wear off if they are done correctly,” Ring explained. “Antidotes for those are near nonexistent, because of some inherently rare ingredients. Emotion-affecting potions are universally banned because of it. However, from what I've seen in Tabitha's mom's mind, this is something wicked strong I've never seen before. May not even be a potion, but a direct spell cast on the drink she had. Just a guess, though. I'd have no clue where to look for a cure for something of this magnitude.”

Tails nodded. “Alright, thanks. I'll just have to keep an eye open for that kind of stuff.” Seeing that Tabitha had finally calmed down, he shut his eyes and slipped into sleep.


	24. Season 1 Chapter 24

CHAPTER 24

Sunlight streaming through the open windows bathed the room in light, conveniently baking Tails' face until it forced him awake. On his shoulder, he could feel Tabitha resting her head against him, arms still wrapped up around his right tail and holding it tight to her chest. He slowly pushed back her head and sat up, rubbing his eyes to acclimate them to the bright sunlit room. “Morning, Ring,” Tails thought, looking around the room.

“Mornin’, partner,” Ring replied. “Seems like Tabitha calmed down quite a bit.”

The fox nodded. “It works, I guess. I’m just glad she doesn’t bite pillows or anything during her sleep,” he thought. “I don’t think I’d have gotten any sleep if she did.” He looked back to Tabitha as she began to wake up, rolling onto her back and letting out a short, quiet yawn. "Morning," Tails said, withdrawing his right tail as soon as she let go of it. “You were having nightmares again. I didn’t think you’d sleep well if you were tossing and turning all night.”

Tabitha seemed to size the fox up with a brief gaze, causing him to blush with embarrassment deep under his facial fur. "Thank you," she finally said as she slid out of bed and walked over to her dresser. Tails stared out the window as she changed out of her night gown and briefly worked over her hair with a brush before collecting her glasses and staff. “It’s a nice day out,” he thought, looking out over a small garden outside Tabitha’s room. When she was ready, they headed out to get breakfast, collecting a sleepy Kirche along the way.

Tabitha and her two guests took a seat at the dining room table. As the last echoing squeak of the wooden chair legs on tile died away, the maids sprung into life, bringing forth a variety of tea pots containing black tea, coffee, and other sharp-smelling morning brews. Tails looked over his shoulder to the old bald butler, catching the man’s attention with a short wave. “So, what’s the battle plan for this mission?” He asked.

The butler looked to Tabitha, waiting for permission from her before pulling the piece of rolled parchment from a breast pocket inside his suit jacket. Unfurling the document, he began to summarize its’ contents.

“The mission requires miss Charlotte to defeat the Water Spirit at Lagdorian lake…” the man began. “It has recently become violent, raising water levels to flood nearby towns and farmland, leaving it unusable. It’s predicted to be a massive detriment to the agricultural output of the nation, due to the farmers that rely on the lake for irrigation… You are instructed to defeat it so that the water levels will return to normal. How you do so is of no concern."

"Doesn't sound too bad. Water spirits should be pretty susceptible to ice magic, so Tabitha should have no problem with this one," Kirche said as she picked up her silverware and began to dig into a plate of scrambled eggs that had been set before her.

"Unfortunately, not as easily done as spoken,” the butler replied. “All water mages undergo a pact with the Water Spirit, and with miss Charlotte’s background as a water mage as a basis for ice magic, she can have her bond revoked for doing such things. It would be unwise to engage in combat, if possible, as it would severely weaken her magic capabilities. She is an extraordinary magician, but taking away an element of a combination magic such as ice-type spells drastically reduces the effectiveness of any wizard. This change would no doubt be permanent.”

"Right, so negotiations first,” Tails thought aloud as he ate, making short work of his portion of bacon. “Surely there’s some way to bargain with it.”

"A sound plan, young fox," the butler agreed. "However, King Joseph explicitly stated that it must be slayed. Whether conflict is avoidable or not, he most definitely will not take well to being disobeyed."

The three ate in silence for a moment, contemplating the task at hand and formulating their own strategies. Tabitha was the first to finish, setting aside her plate and politely using a napkin before heading outside to organize the carriage ride. Tails and Kirche quickly joined her, hopping into the white carriage for the ride ahead.

"So, do we know how to even find this spirit? I’m assuming you’ve done it before, Tabitha?” Tails asked as the carriage jumped forward, picking up speed in short time.

Tabitha nodded. “We’ll fight,” she declared resolutely, anticipating the fox’s next question.

"Are you sure? Kirche asked, surprised. “Yeah, it's what your uncle wants, but in the end, he just… wants you dead. If the spirit revokes your bond and you lose your water magic, we might not be able to get it back.”

Tabitha shook her head, dispelling any doubt in Kirche’s mind that she’d be swayed. She quickly buried herself in a new novel from the carriage’s built-in library box as the ride began to drag on, leaving Tails and Kirche to their thoughts. It wasn’t long, however, until the carriage suddenly pulled to a halt.

"Hey, we aren't here yet, for sure,” Kirche remarked, looking out through the window built into the carriage door. “Lake Lagdorian is halfway back to the Academy. We shouldn’t be there for a few more hours, at least…”

For a brief moment, Tails could hear muffled footsteps and talking outside the carriage. "Someone's outside. Should we step o-" he began, only to be cut off as a heavy-bladed axe violently crashed through the carriage door. The axe head suddenly jerked sideways to gain purchase on the door from the inside like an anchor. With a loud grunt, the door was ripped off of its’ hinges, revealing the muscular, rough-shod man and his group of bandits on the side of the road behind him. His cohorts were holding the driver on his knees, a shining blade tight to his throat.

Tails tapped a button on his wristcomm, pulling up his T-Buster. The air inside the carriage began to hum as the fox let loose a torrent of small, non-lethal charges from the red energy cannon, quickly incapacitating the breacher and other swordsmen. As he stepped out to retrieve the driver, however, a short arrow whizzed past the fox’s face, clattering as it fell to the rocky road a ways away. Tails quickly ducked back into the carriage, peeking around the doorway as much as he dared to try and get a look at the hidden archer. As soon as he began to poke his head out, a barrage of arrows slammed into the white-painted wood around him, scarring the paint as they bounced off harmlessly into the woods. “Ring, I need you to put a shield up around the driver. I can’t get to him!” Tails thought frantically.

"On it!" Ring replied. A blue energy shield layer flickered into life around the kneeling driver, startling him from his awaiting—certain-death stupor. "Get up!” Tails called out to him, motioning toward the reins. The driver nodded, hobbling over to the driver’s seat.

The archers promptly responded with a volley of arrows, but they were no match for the shield – one arrow that would have caught the old man in the side of the head shattered into hundreds of wooden shards upon impact. When the man had finally clambered up into the driver’s seat, he gave the reins a quick crack, spurring the twin Ardennais stallions into life.

Tails allowed himself to fall into his seat as the carriage lurched forward. "Alright, what the hell was that?” he asked, releasing a pent-up sigh of relief. “Maybe it’s just me, but I don’t think of bandits or mercenaries when I hear ‘angry water spirit’.”

"Joseph," Tabitha replied, setting her staff back on the cushioned bench next to her and pushing her glasses higher up on the bridge of her nose.

Ring popped out of his sheath at Tails’ waist, letting out a fake cough to catch the fox’s attention. “If I remember right, Gallia doesn’t have much of an army. In the past, they relied on mercenaries a lot to get jobs done. Even back when I was with my first master, there were rumors of elite mercenary corps working for the king of Gallia at the time.”

“So the question isn’t who sent them, but why?” Kirche pondered.

Ring laughed. “Maybe not so much why, but what’s motivating them. Maybe Joseph wants Tabitha dead, maybe he forgot to fork over cash for their monthly payments. Either way, the Gallian royal crest on the back of the carriage is a pretty big target regardless. You guys aren’t exactly poor, you know. By the way, those bandits are on horses and are closing pretty fast.”

Tails nodded leaned out of the doorway to see seven horses slowly gaining on the carriage. Three were carrying heavy axe and sword-wielding bandits, while the other four carried archers with bows of various sizes, quivers on their backs bristling with arrows. Latching onto the doorway with his left hand, Tails leaned out and began opening fire on the bandits.

The little red arm-cannon hummed as he took potshots at the approaching enemies, his aim jostled by the bouncing carriage. Several bursts found their target, however, as two of the horses carrying axemen tumbled to the ground under electrically-induced spastic convulsions.. One of the riders was thrown free of his mount into some roadside bushes, while the other wasn’t as fortunate; his foot was caught in his saddle straps as he was launched, promptly redirecting him into the ground head-first. Tails grimaced as the man’s head snapped back at a gruesome angle before disappearing underneath his tumbling mount. A few wild shots later, another pulse found its mark on one of the archers, knocking out. The unconscious man slid off his mount as the terrified horse swerved into the woods, leaving only one axeman and three archers in pursuit.

Realizing the danger of further pursuit, the axeman stuck his dirty fingers into his mouth and let out a sharp whistle before pulling his mount to a stop. The archers, however, decided to let out a final volley of arrows before retreating. Many of the poorly-aimed arrows buried themselves in the back wall of the carriage, but one managed to find its’ way past Tails’ left arm, nicking it just below his shoulder. Tails felt his strength suddenly sapped from his arm as he grimaced from the searing pain, quickly losing his grip on the door.

As he began to fall, he felt Kirche grab onto his tails and yank him back into the carriage as hard as she could. The fox fell to the floor, his right hand flying to his arm as soon as the T-Buster de-materialized. "Shit, it feels like my arm's on fire,” he said through gritted teeth. “Like a bunch of dirty paper cuts dusted with salt or chlorine.”

Tabitha reached down and pushed the fox’s hand aside to look at the wound, unfazed by the sight of the blackened wound. “Poison,” she mumbled, reaching for her staff. Holding her staff, she whispered a short chant that brought on a bone-freezing chill to the air in the carriage. A small droplet of water formed in the air over the fox, quickly growing to the size of a large apple. Lowering her staff slightly, Tabitha directed the floating sphere of water down to Tails’ arm, encasing the cut in the clear liquid. Within moments, the ball of water turned a dark shade of blackish-violet.

Tails let out a sigh of relief. “Thanks Tabitha. Feels great, but I'm still losing sensation in my arm,” he said, prodding his shoulder with his free hand.

"The poison's probably spreading beyond the cut,” Kirche added, watching as Tabitha disposed of the black-tinted water, tossing it out the door with a wave of her wand. “Tabitha, make a ring of ice around Tails' arm. It'll slow the blood flow and limit the spread of the poison.”

Tabitha nodded and began chanting once more. Another droplet of water began to form, albeit much slower this time. “She must’ve drained the air in here of all its’ moisture,” Tails thought, watching the droplet grow with curious fascination.  
Within a few minutes, the droplet had reached a considerable size. This time, Tabitha resized the water into a long ovaloid shape that covered the entire upper half of his arm. With a brief flash, the blob of water froze solid, chilling his arm. "I hope I don’t get frostbite from this… Where'd you even think of this, Kirche?" Tails asked.

"My dad's a big military guy, so he's always training with new survival techniques,” she replied, rolling her eyes. “Just one of those things I learned from him, I guess.”

"Tough guy, to be making casts out of ice. I’d be surprised if he weren’t a quadriplegic.”

“Well, that’s Germania for you,” she conceded with a shrug. “I suppose losing a limb is better than not living. Hopefully we’ll be there soon, before more bandits come back.”

Tails nodded, giving his numbed shoulder a final rub before taking his seat on the bench once more. “Thanks for the save, by the way,” he said to the red-haired girl, gesturing to the door with his tail. “Falling out of a speeding carriage wouldn’t be fun, for sure.”

Kirche smiled. “No problem! I wouldn’t fancy it either,” she said, idly playing with her short wooden wand as the carriage sped along.

* * *

 

At the frantic pace the driver maintained, it wasn’t long until the lake came into view. Along the water’s edge not too far from where the carriage dropped the three off, Tails could see the rooftops of submerged buildings poking up out of the water’s glassy surface. He hardly had time to look around before Tabitha breezed past him, motioning for him to follow her. He joined her at the water’s edge, looking over the still water with fascination. “Beautiful! Reminds me of the glacial lakes nearby where Sonic and I used to go snowboarding in Ice Cap zone. I wonder if he still maintains all of the snowboards and hover boards I’ve built him over the years…”

Tabitha tapped the fox on his shoulder, snapping him out of his daydream “Lay down,” she instructed. “Arm next to the water.”

Tails quickly complied, resting his head on top of one of his tails as he laid down next to the water’s edge. Tabitha gently dropped to her knees, taking a seat next to him as she quietly began to chant her spells. With a sharp crack of breaking ice, the cast around Tails’ arm shattered into several shards, dropping into the lake and floating away. The water near Tails’ arm at the lake’s edge began to move on its’ own, leaping up out of the lake and encasing the wound once more. It didn’t take long for a pins-and-needles sensation to take over his arm once more as blood circulation resumed at its’ normal pace.

“Wow, that feels great!” Tails remarked as his arm slowly regained sensation, feeing the cold water flow past the cut on his arm. He tried to sit up, but Tabitha held out a hand to stop him. “Takes time,” she stated, looking down at the fox.  
Tails nodded and laid back down. Bored, he resigned himself to watching the late afternoon clouds float by over the lake as Tabitha slipped in and out of her soft chant. Looking down at the water, he watched as the crystal-clear liquid carried black ooze away from the festering cut in a circular flow, surprised at the amount of venom had transferred from the grazing blow of the arrow. “Did it really have that much poison on it? That seems a bit excessive for killing anything less than a rhino…” he thought.

“I’ve seen this stuff before, during my time with my first master,” Ring commented in Tails’ mind. “It’s a magic-based poison, so you don’t need to necessarily have a lot of it if its’ in high concentration. It infects the wound site like a disease, corrupting the blood as it flows by. You’d probably be dead if Kirche hadn’t thought to slow the blood flow with ice, and definitely dead if Tabitha weren’t as skilled as she is. She’s enchanting the water as it flows by in real time, withdrawing the poison as your blood circulates past the cut. That’d impress even the best clerics, the kind of people working directly with kings and queens,” he added. “The poison’s probably all over your body now, just not in the concentrations it would’ve been without that ice to slow down the blood in your arm.”

Tails looked up at Tabitha in silent awe, watching as the blue-haired wizard quietly chanted to herself, eyes closed as she focused solely on the words in her mind. “Wow, no wonder it takes a while,” Tails thought. “Active external blood filtration without any technology… man, my doctor would pay an arm and a leg to be able to do that.”

“Hopefully not one of his patients’ limbs,” Ring joked.

Tails softly chuckled, turning to watch as the water flowing past his arm slowly faded from black to violet, then finally to red as fresh blood seeped out of the closing wound. Suddenly, the water cut off, the last drops of red-tinted water slithering back into the lake and dissipating out of existence. The fox looked up at Tabitha, locking eyes with her expressionless gaze. Her face seemed to soften for a moment before she averted her eyes to the cut on his arm; rather, where the cut had been. Not a trace of the injury was to be found after the spell had completed its’ work.

“Done,” Tabitha announced. She stood up and stepped back, giving the fox some space. Tails quickly hopped to his feet, rubbing his arm where the cut had been. “Feels like new!” he remarked. “So, how do we go about summoning this water spirit thing?”

“Evening,” she replied.

Kirche let out an exasperated sigh from where she was seated against a tree. "We have to wait until evening? That's still hours away!" she complained.

Tails just shrugged as he took a seat in the shade of a different tree. “Well, I’m gonna take a nap, I guess. Just wake me when it’s time.” He laid back on the soft grass, resting his head in his hands as he fell asleep.


	25. Season 1 Chapter 25

CHAPTER 25:

“Hey, get up. I think we almost slept too long.”

Tails’ eyes snapped open, acclimating themselves to the new, dimly-lit sky. It was almost dark, the last rays of sunlight streaming over the tops of the trees on the other side of the lake. Both of the moons were out in force, their pale pink and turquoise surfaces glowing brightly. Looking around, Tails saw Kirche standing over him, casually dusting off the back of her skirt and high-leg leather boots. Tabitha had fallen asleep at the base of the tree Tails had slept under, resting against the rough surface of the tree.

"Hey, I think we almost overslept. Let's get up and get ready," Kirche whispered. She walked over to her sleeping friend and tapped her awake, helping the blue-haired girl to her feet.

"Ok, so how do we summon this thing?" Tails asked as he hopped to his feet. Without a word, Tabitha walked to the water's edge and began to chant once more, standing as still as a statue. Kirche and Tails stood nearby, waiting to see what happened.

"Bro, four people approaching from the woods. None of which are the driver," Ring said aloud.

"Those four remaining bandits?" Tails asked.

"…I don’t think so. One of them is pretty drugged up… oh shit, I think it’s Louise," Ring said. "She’s with some other girl I don’t recognize. Two boys are approaching through the trees, fast. I’d bet that’s Saito, at least one of them is. I dunno about the other. HEY, DERF, YOU OLD CODGER, YOU THERE???” He yelled.

Tails promptly slapped Ring back down into his sheath, knowing that their cover was blown. “I swear to god, you’re going to get us killed if you keep that up,” he muttered, drawing his T-Buster. “You better be sure it’s them or I’m melting you down when we get back.”

“It’s them, trust me,” Ring reassured the fox. “I’d know that old bastard Derflinger anywhere. It’s like old-man smell for ethereal beings, if you know what I mean. Maybe more active than that, like an old man passing gas.”

Sure enough, a curious “Tails?” called out from the bushes not too far from the edge of the lake, near where Kirche had been seated earlier in the day. Tails watched as the familiar blue-hoodie-clad Japanese boy stepped out of his hiding place in the bushes. “What are you guys doing out here?

Suddenly, an army of metal-clad figures rushed out of the treeline to Saito’s aid, but he quickly turned on them with Derflinger in hand, reducing them to metal rubble. A surprised cry arose from the bushes as a blond-haired boy stood up, fuming. “Saito, you’re supposed to be attacking them, not me! Now look what you did to my golems!”

"Can it, Guiche. It's Tabitha and Kirche, we can't attack them," Saito replied, waving the boy off. "Call out Montmorency, leave Louise where she is. Tails, what's going on here?"

"I'd ask you the same thing. Tabitha was sent on a mission to defeat the Water Spirit to prevent more flooding of people's houses. Now your turn," Tails said, thoroughly confused.

"Long story short, Montmorency over there tried to use an illegal love potion on Guiche,” Saito explained, pointing over his shoulder into the woods with his sword. “I was in the bath, Siesta joined me again, and Louise got pissed. She stole the wine Montmorency poured the potion into and chugged it on the spot before storming off. Now… you don’t even want to know. It’s pretty ugly.”

“As in…?” Tails asked.

“There was a good bit of time where you couldn’t peel her away from me without knocking her out. That’s actually what we had to do to get her here,” Saito continued, waiting for Tails to stop laughing. “Anyway, I coerced Guiche and Montmorency into helping me make an antidote, which requires a drop of the Water Spirit. The spirit sad she'd give it to us if we defeat those who were attacking her and recovered something that was stolen. We thought it was you guys. By the way, this is Guiche, if you haven’t met yet,” he added, gesturing to the blond-haired boy.

“Hi! Nice to meet you,” Tails said, waving to the boy as he stepped out into the open next to Saito. “Hey, I think I remember you from somewhere… Oh yeah! Kirche, wasn’t he one of those guys that Flame and I knocked out of your window when you were with Saito a while back?”

Behind the two boys, a third figure emerged from the bushes. A curly, blond-haired girl approached Guiche from behind with a gleam in her eyes and a scowl that could scare anyone. The look of fear that spread across Guiche’s face only served to confirm his guilt to this new girl as she dragged him aside, doling out a verbal lashing like Tails had never seen. “And THAT’s Montmorency, Guiche’s girlfriend,” Saito added with a grin as he stepped back to watch the chaos unfold.

“Jeez, and I thought Louise was bad,” Tails admitted, glancing back at Tabitha and Kirche to check on them. “I don’t think I’ll ever have sympathy for Sonic complaining about Amy any more…”

Within minutes, the fight had subsided as Guiche managed to appease Montmorency with his pleas. “Well, Montmorency only ever gets mad when he cheats on her,” Kirche said to Tails as the two quarreling lovers came to their senses. “Louise is just a little ball of rage. Although she can be a thorn in everyone’s sides sometimes, its’ adorable,” she admitted, turning to look back at her blue-haired friend at the water’s edge. “Tabitha, how’s things coming over there?”

Tabitha failed to respond as she chanted away, eventually lowering her staff. Without warning, the water in front of Tabitha began to glow, expanding and condensing into a small circle of light about twenty feet from the shore. The glowing water condensed into a single drop, launching out of the water into the air. The drop suddenly exploded in size, taking on a humanoid appearance as tall as the trees to either side of Tails and the others.

“Woah,” Kirche gasped, watching as the humanoid blob’s features slowly refined themselves, until it took on the general shape of Tabitha. The spirit reached out a watery hand, pointing toward Saito.

Saito coughed, clearing his throat. “So, uhh… Water Spirit! We caught these three, but it turns out they’re our friends who need your help as well. They need you to stop flooding everything as soon as possible.”

An ominous, resounding voice filled the air as the spirit retracted its’ hand. “Do they have the Ring of Andvari?” it asked.

Saito looked over at Tails and the others for confirmation, receiving nothing but shrugs and shaking heads all around. "No, they don't," Saito responded. “If we promise to find this ring for you, could you lend us your help?”

The ethereal spirit deliberated for a moment before responding. "Very well. As Gandalfr, I accept your promise, young man. Here is your drop," the spirit said. A small dot of light condensed in the body of the spirit before floating over to the group, landing in Montmorency’s hands. The light slowly died away, revealing a small, finely-wrought glass bottle with a clear liquid inside. "The water levels shall return to their borders. I will await your return, Gandalfr."

Everyone sat in silence as the spirit gave up its’ shape, receding into the lake once more. Tails was the first to recover, nodding. "Well, that went better than expected. We just… head home and hope the spirit keeps its’ word, I guess?"

Saito nodded. “I guess Guiche, Montmorency, Louise and I are headed back to the Academy to make this potion. We'll see you guys when you get back. See ya,” he said, turning to walk back into the trees. Guiche and Montmorency followed him, disappearing through the bushes.

"Well, we should probably get headed back as well. I don't want to spend the night out here to see if the spirit fulfills its’ part of the deal with those four bandits still roaming around," Kirche said, looking around. “Where’s the carriage driver?”

“Fishing,” Tabitha quietly replied, looking down the lake’s edge toward the submerged buildings. At the edge of the water tucked up in a grove of trees, Tails could make out the figure of the driver seated on top of the carriage roof, silhouetted by a candle or some other light. The three made their way along the lakeside to the carriage, watching as the driver hastily stashed the compact, simple fishing rod underneath his bench seat upon noticing his clients approaching.

"Catch anything?" Tails asked as the driver climbed down to stand next to the vacant doorframe.

"A few small ones earlier today,” the suited man replied. “I'd guess most of the fish would stay back in the lake’s depths rather than migrating to these flooded zones. Worth a try though.” The driver reached back to his driver’s seat and took down a small oil lamp from its’ hook, holding it out to the fox.

Tails took the lamp from the man and closed the door behind him, taking his seat on the bench. He hung the lamp up on a hook mounted above the doorframe as the carriage lurched forward with a muted crack of the reins, headed for home.

* * *

 

Tails’ eyes cracked open, his vision blurred as they adjusted to the new light. He let out a loud yawn as he forced himself to sit up, trying to keep from falling back asleep. The carriage had pulled into the manor grounds in the wee hours of the morning, cutting down amount of decent sleep he got before his body forced him awake out of habit. “I wonder if the others are up yet,” he thought as he rolled out of bed, slipping into his shoes.

He grabbed his gloves and Ring in his sheath as he stepped out into the hallway, making his way down to Tabitha’s room. Pressing his large fuzzy ear to the door and hearing footsteps inside, he knocked on the door and waited. Tabitha promptly answered the door, dressed and ready for the day. Behind her, he could see her suitcase on the ground, lying open and half-full of various clothes.

"Morning! Just wanted to see if you were awake yet. Are we going somewhere?" Tails asked, nodding toward the open case.

"Academy," Tabitha replied.

"Why? We’re only a few days into break, we still have the rest of the two we… oh, I get it. Sorry," Tails said sheepishly, guessing her motives had to do with her mother. "I'll go tell Kirche to start packing."

Tabitha nodded and shut the door, returning to her packing. “Let me know when you’re done and I’ll come back to grab your bag,” Tails called through the door. He turned and headed down to Kirche’s room, knocking three times.

Hearing nothing from inside, Tails slowly pushed the door open. He could see Kirche still bundled up underneath her sheets, her flame-red hair engulfing her pillow. “Hey, Kirche, get up!” He whispered. Receiving no reaction, he knocked loudly on the door once more. This time, Kirche began to stir. “Five more minutes…” she groaned, rustling around in bed.

“Sorry, but Tabitha’s packing up to head home today. She didn’t say when, but I’d have to guess it’s not too long after breakfast,” Tails replied.

At this, Kirche sat up in bed. "Why? We haven’t even been here a full day," she asked, shooting the fox a curious, surprised look.

"Yeah, Tabitha's done here. I think it was just for the mission. She wants to head back now, so… yeah," he replied with a shrug.

"Alright, I'll be ready in a second,” she said as she hopped out of bed, withdrawing a fresh set of clothes from her scarred leather travel case. Tails ducked back out into the hall while she changed, waiting until she gave him the okay for him to come back in. She quickly brushed her hair, working the wooden animal-hair brush all the way down the length of her hair to her lower hip many times before tossing the brush back in the case. As he moved to pick up the case, however, Kirche waved him off. “Don’t worry about it, I’ll get it when its’ time to go,” she said with a smile. “Thanks anyway, though.”

Tails nodded. “Alright. I’m gonna go check on Tabitha and see if she’s done. See you in the dining hall.”

Tails walked back to Tabitha's room to help pack, but she was already done and her travel case gone. “Probably had one of the butlers load it in the carriage for her,” he thought. He made his way back through the manor to the dining hall, finding Tabitha and Kirche already seated and waiting on him. Tails hardly had time to draw up his chair to the table before Kirche set into Tabitha with questions.

"Tabitha, why are we leaving? We haven't been here for long," she asked.

"Studying," Tabitha replied, not looking up from her food.

"You can't study here? I'd imagine you have enough books here to last a lifetime of reading."

Tails glared at Kirche and mouthed “mother” to her, receiving an understanding nod in return. Kirche focused on her food, remaining silent for the rest of the meal. When they were finished, she headed back to her room to pick up her bag while Tabitha and Tails waited out by the carriage, now repaired with a fresh door. As soon as Kirche returned with her bag, the three boarded the carriage, bound for the Magic Academy of Tristain.

* * *

 

The white-painted carriage pulled in through the main gate of the Academy several hours after noon. The sun above was already well on its’ way down from its’ midday peak, casting longer and longer shadows from the perimeter wall as it sank. As the driver pulled the horses to a stop, Tabitha shut her book and picked up her staff, prodding Tails awake. The fox promptly snapped out of his nap, letting out a quick yawn and stretching his tails after having slept the day away on them.

“Ah, that feels good!” Kirche said as she stepped out of the carriage, touching her toes to stretch out. “Long carriage rides drive me nuts, sometimes. You think dinner’s almost ready?”

“Maybe. I’m gonna go do some work in Colbert’s workshop for a while. If I had to guess, it looks like Louise is back to normal, and worth avoiding,” the fox said, pointing to several blackened, ash-coated patches of grass. “Definitely her handiwork. I’ll see you guys in a bit.”

The fox walked off toward the wooden shack of a workshop, the occasional crunch of burnt grass under his feet filling the air. The black dots littered the school grounds all the way from the main gate to the workshop and beyond, as far as he could see. “She seriously needs a psychiatrist,” he thought as he reached for the door. As he stepped into the building, he could hear pounding footsteps passing by outside as Saito and Guiche rushed by, thoroughly winded. Moments later, Louise roared by, brandishing her riding crop and spouting a string of obscenities in regards to the potion.

Shaking his head, Tails latched the door behind him and stepped over to the trapdoor to his workshop, making his way down the ladder. He turned up the wireless lights in the ceiling with his wristcomm as he made his way across the workshop, collecting his HUD device and a few other tools as he went. “That should be all I need for now,” he thought as he set the tools down and hopped up onto the X Tornado, popping the front canopy open and taking a seat in the pilot’s chair with his HUD. Within moments, he was sketching away blueprints of his ideas on the device as fast as he could conjure them.

"Whatcha doing, bro?" Ring asked, breaking the dead silence of the workshop.

"I'm making a blueprint for a project I want to build," Tails replied nonchalantly.

"…What are you building?"

"An upgrade for the X Tornado. After flying it out with Tabitha a few days ago, I’ve decided its’ new power source I built before I came to this world is currently able to handle all of the basic and advanced functions of the plane as it is. But, I'd like to see if I can optimize the turbines to take advantage of any excess power to reach higher speeds," Tails said, excitedly. "Since I have access to Professor Colbert’s alchemy to produce all the rare elements I could ever need, with some exception, I’d like to exchange the current turbine fan blades with new ones made of a lighter alloy. The less mass you’re spinning, the more eff-”

“Yeah yeah yeah,” Ring said, cutting the fox off mid-sentence. "You do you, bro. That scientific stuff isn't for me. By the way, it appears that we might be having a guest. Tabitha’s upstairs.”

Tails looked up from the HUD’s screen. He could hear the trapdoor being pulled open, followed by the soft tapping as Tabitha slowly worked her way down the ladder, holding her staff in one hand. A small stack of books slowly descended down the ladder shaft behind her, setting themselves down on the floor at her side as she took a seat in his canvas hammock. "Hey Tabitha, whatcha up to?" he asked.

Tabitha laid back in the hammock and set the stack of books next to her, retrieving one from the top of the pile. "Studying," she replied.

Tails nodded. "Alright, sounds good. Just a word of warning, things will probably get a bit noisy when I start up the printer. Might want some earplugs or something." With that, he returned to his blueprinting and measurement work, tapping and drawing his way into the evening.


	26. Season 1 Chapter 26

CHAPTER 26:

“Almost done installing this turbine blade set,” Tails thought as he cranked away on a hefty bolt to secure another layer of turbine blades into place. He briefly sat up to reach for the final, and by far the largest, disc that held the sharp alloy blades in place before burying his face in the turbine cowling once more. Carefully lowering the heavy disc into place, he quickly secured it into place with another round of bolts and a special torque wrench he’d modified specifically for the job. “That should do it!” He exclaimed, rubbing a few beads of sweat from his head with his tails. “If the printer’s done, I should be able to move on to the next turbine.”

Sitting up from his work, he noticed that Tabitha had silently approached the craft while he was working. She was curiously peering into the depths of the turbine through the air intake, watching him as he worked. “Hey, Tabitha, what’s up? Need something?” he asked.

Tabitha shook her head, silently walking around the craft to compare his work with the older blades still installed in the other turbine.

“Wanna come take a look from the service hatch up top?”

At this, she nodded. Tails set down his socket wrench and slid over to the right wing to help her up on top of the craft. "So this is one of the two turbines that provides the thrust for the X Tornado in a gas atmosphere,” he said as he slid back over to the open access hatch on top of the left turbine cowling, tapping one of the larger fan blades with his finger. “It's essentially comprised of a motor that spins layers of blades like a large screw, but broken up into several sizes of blades and blade densities per ring that are connected by a series of gearboxes, so that they alternate rotating clockwise and counterclockwise. These blades serve to scoop air through the engine at extremely high speeds, compressing the air into the back of the turbine unit about here,” he explained, pointing toward the back of the turbine unit near the exhaust end. “Compressing the air heats it up, so it’ll expand to an even greater volume once we throw it out the back for better veolcity gains like a super-powerful ducted fan. At full throttle, it takes in so much air that it compresses it to dangerously high pressures, even inside these rather large engine housings. Anyway, when the motors build up that kind of compression, I can vent it through a secondary vent on the bottom, increasing thrust in emergency situations. I don't use the 'afterburner' much, since the fans can only take in so much air, so I have to run the motors at REALLY high speeds to take in that much air. It takes a lot of energy, which depletes the store of Power Rings that functions all of the extra systems on board, like the guns, GPS, communication equipment, et cetera."

Throughout the short lecture, Tabitha’s mind was on overdrive as she pieced everything together. “Space travel?” she asked curiously, her voice hardly breaking the still silence of the workshop.

Tails grinned, happy to see that she was getting everything so far. "Good question! I told you when there’s no air in space, so this system doesn't work there, right? Well, about a year ago when I was building the Blue Typhoon, I found that Chaos energy, the stuff that makes up these Power Rings,” he said, pointing to the glowing golden toruses mounted to the ceiling, “…can be used similar to an ion drive in space that’s magnitudes stronger. Because of air resistance and aerodynamics, that system of movement isn't very efficient in a gaseous atmosphere. It would probably have a hard time keeping the X Tornado aloft at full power. However, since there’s no gravity or air resistance in space, it works great, giving almost similar performance to the fan system here on Earth. Or whatever this planet is called."

Finished with his explanation, Tails double-checked the bolts on the turbine’s fan discs by hand before replacing the small nose-cone cover that concealed them. The fox reconnected a bunch of wires and shut the service hatch, then slid down from the top of the Tornado to fetch finished parts from the 3D printer. It didn’t take long for him to assemble the turbine fan discs he needed with the help of his T-Buster’s plasma cutter, hauling the heavy chunks of metal one by one back to the aircraft after welding the fan blades in place.

Sitting next to her familiar, Tabitha quietly observed as Tails eagerly yanked open the service hatch on the aircraft’s right-side turbine, deftly disconnecting the necessary electronics as if it were more habitual than brushing his teeth. Sensing that he’d need it, she reached over and picked up his socket wrench, handing it to him as he set into undoing the turbine’s nose cone.

“Thanks, Tabitha!” he said, taking the wrench from her and handing her the nose cone. “Just set that up on top there somewhere, thanks.”

Behind them, sounds of a shutting door and footsteps caught Tails’ attention, but he didn’t bother pausing his work as the visitors climbed down the ladder.

“Woooow! This is crazy!” he could hear Kirche exclaim. “No wonder you run off to work so often. It’s so quiet and cozy!”

A cough rang out, which Tails identified as Professor Colbert. “Is Miles busy at the moment? I see he’s back, at least. I wanted to check on him when I heard from Saito that he would be arriving today or tomorrow.”

“Yeah, I’m a little busy but nothing major,” the fox replied, setting the first of the old turbine discs aside as he sat up. “You needed me?”

“No, no, just wanted to drop by. What are you doing?”

Tails held up the heavy, blade-rimmed disc as an example. “Just replacing old turbine blades to make the Tornado more efficient. I used up a lot of the materials I had you alchemize for me, so whenever you could make more, that’d be fantastic. If you wanna come take a look, you’re welcome to.”

Professor Colbert jogged over, hoisting himself up onto the Tornado’s fuselage with surprising speed. "So these blades scoop air through these large spaces to push the craft?” he asked, staring down into the array of shaped blades. “I've never seen anything like this. It’s so precise, so beautiful…"

Tails ducked his head back into the service hatch, quickly undoing the rest of the turbine discs. “I don’t suppose you could hand me those fresh discs down there?” Tails asked, looking up at the bald professor. 

Colbert nodded and gave his cylindrical walking staff a wave. Without so much as a word of enchantment, the discs leaped up, floating in the air not too far from the service hatch. Tails plucked the first disc out of the air, guiding the now-weightless metal part into place and securing it down with the old disc’s locking bolts. Installing the rest of the discs flew by in minutes with Colbert’s help as the two girls watched in silence.

“That should do it,” Tails declared as he reconnected the last of the cables and dropped the service hatch shut.

“Well, then I’ll be heading back out,” Professor Colbert said. “My evening remedial classes should be starting soon, so I’d best be going.” The older man retreated to the ladder, waving to the students a final time before climbing up and out of sight.

With Tails’ work complete, Tabitha returned to the canvas hammock and exchanged her staff for her textbook once more. Tails hopped down from the aircraft, picking up Ring in his sheath and making his way over to the ladder. “Hey, Tabitha, I'm gonna step outside, maybe grab a snack or something. You want me to get you something? Pillow, drink, blanket for chilling on the hammock maybe?”

"Pillow, please,” she replied, not looking up from her book.

Tails nodded and climbed up into the workshop above, breezing past Colbert’s work and through the open door into the open yard. “Perhaps I’ll run drop you off in Louise’s room and grab one of her pillows. It’s her night to have me tonight… I think,” the fox thought, shrugging. “It was supposed to be her night before we went to Tabitha’s, but she sent me to Kirche’s, so maybe she’ll have me back tonight.”

“She might flip out if you take one of her pillows, though,” Ring replied in Tails’ mind.

“I doubt she’ll notice,” he replied as he jogged off toward the dorm tower that housed Louise’s room. “Besides, I’m sure she’d understand. Rather, Tabitha would make her understand.”

Tails quickly dashed up the stairs, slowing to a halt as he approached Louise’s room. Curiously, the door was slightly ajar, but Tails paid it no mind as he raised his hand to the door handle. Inside, a cloaked figure sat on the bed at the far end of the room, causing Tails to jump back in surprise, scrabbling to draw Ring from his sheath. “Evenin’, Princess. How’s life?” the sword asked, much more relaxed than his wielder.

The seated figure pushed back his cloak, revealing the dark, purple-tinted hair Tails recognized as belonging to Princess Henrietta. "Hello, Miles,” she said with a kind smile. “May I speak to you for a moment? I was intending to wait here for Louise and Saito, but since you’re here, I might as well ask. Would you be able to help me once more?"

“Sure!” Tails said, returning Ring to his sheath and taking a seat at Louise’s writing desk near the door. “So what’s the problem this time?”

The princess blushed in embarrassment for a moment, spurring Tails to apologize for his slightly rude phrasing, but she quickly dismissed him. "I’m sorry to bother you again, but there’s few else I would trust with this task, both in your capabilities and your… lack of status, to put it bluntly. In short, there’s been a rather startling uprising in the nearby country of Albion. The noble family there is under threat from a coup, and we believe they intend to move on Tristain from there after seizing power – these are the same foes I feared would make their move against me after the incident with the Staff of Destruction.”

“Some sort of terrorist group?” Tails asked. “People don’t just go around taking over nations without some degree of organization. Even Robotnik knew better than that, back when he turned everyone into robots. Eventually, even he had to get help.”

Princess Henrietta nodded. “I must make a political marriage with the Germanian royal families in order to gain their military support. We have a very small standing army, you see. However, I had… sent a love letter to one of the members of the Albion royal family shortly before this uprising, to a man by the name of Wales. I need you to retrieve the letter, to ensure that my marriage with the Germanian family is not cancelled. If I were to send someone of rank, and they were to be caught going after the letter, there would undoubtedly be serious backlash. I hate to ask this of you, but could you, Saito and Louise retrieve it for me?"

Tails grinned and gave her a solid thumbs-up. "Of course. We'll get it back, no problem! We just get over there, ask him for the letter back, and don't get caught in a warzone in the meantime. Should I go tell Louise and Saito now?”

To Tails’ surprise, Henrietta hopped up from the bed and bowed to him. "Thank you! I can't begin to express my gratitude,” she exclaimed. “I’ll stay here until Saito and Louise come back to ask them properly. I’d like to say hello to Louise anyhow.”

“Alright,” Tails said, undoing his sword sheath and setting it on top of the desk. He walked over to the bed and picked up a pillow before retreating to the doorway. “I’ll let Louise know you’re here if I see her. And, uhh… If she doesn’t notice on her own, don’t tell her I’m borrowing one of her pillows. Do you need me to bring you anything while you wait?”

“Thank you, but I’ll be fine,” she replied as she took a seat on the bed once more. “Have a good evening!”

Tails nodded and stepped out into the hall, shutting the door behind him. He carried the pillow back down to the workshop, handing it to Tabitha before returning to his work. “I don’t think I have enough materials for too much more,” he thought as he looked over the array of supplies covering the majority of his workbench space. “Although I do have enough stainless steel for something small, and… I know what I’ll make.” He looked back to Tabitha, checking to see whether she’d be watching his work or reading before carrying the supplies over to the printer. He grabbed his HUD and began digging through the device’s databanks of his old projects, cycling through several months of work. Finally, he came to rest on a single project he’d done a couple years back, out of boredom.

Hooking up the HUD to the 3D printer via a small cable, he queued up the project and filled the material feed system with the last of his chunks of steel. Tails left the device to its’ task and walked over to Tabitha. “Hey, Tabitha, can I ask you a favor?” He asked. "Follow me upstairs for a sec. Bring your staff."

Tabitha quietly dog-eared her place in the textbook she was reading before sitting up, plucking her staff off of the ground as she rolled out of the hammock. Tails led her up the ladder and out into the open grassy lawn in front of Colbert’s workshop. It was starting to grow dark out as the sun slowly sank beyond the horizon – Tails’ grumbling stomach yearning for dinner reassured him that it was indeed getting late, but he paid it no mind. “So, I’d like to work on my reaction speed a little. I’d like you to stand by the workshop and throw a couple icicles at me,” he instructed.

Taking a ready stance, Tabitha held her staff out at the ready and waited for the fox’s signal to begin. Tails took several steps back and brought up his T-Buster with a tap of a button on his wristcomm, engaging the red arm-cannon’s plasma cutter beam. The yellow bar of light, some three feet long, cast a golden glow across the lawn that glinted off of Tabitha’s glasses. “Go ahead,” Tails said, nodding to the blue-haired mage.

Tabitha nodded in return and began to whisper her incantations. As a swarm of icicles began to form around her, Tails rushed forward with his T-Buster pointed forward in a lunging thrust, forcing her to quickly leap out of the way. As she rolled to her feet once more, the half-formed icicles shattered as they fell to the ground around the fox, no longer supported by her chanting. Tails sprung forward once more, only to be interrupted by a thick sheet of ice that formed around the fox, encasing him. To her surprise, however, a blast of steam filled the air as Tails’ T-Buster made short work of the ice. Tails, somewhat protected by his fur, leaped through the scalding-hot steam, catching her unawares. The sudden appearance of the fox only inches from her face forced her to take a step back as she instinctually swiped at him with her staff, but Tails dodged the blow and hastily retreated, squaring up with her once more. 

“One more time, please.”

Without giving him any time to prepare, Tabitha held her staff in front of her, rushing through a string of simple spells as quickly as she could. Threatening, razor-sharp icicles formed much faster this time, poised and ready to launch, but Tails stood as still as a statue. The moment the dagger-like shards of ice began to move, he broke into a sprint in a clockwise circle around her, booting up his rocket shoes and spinning his tails to propel himself even faster. She looked around, trying to track the young fox’s movements with her icicles, but couldn’t. In a moment of clarity, she brought the icy daggers close to herself before launching them in every direction like an oversized grenade. Icicles lodged in every soft surface they could, littering the field with razor-like shards that she hoped would inhibit his movement. Suddenly, she felt a quick tap on her shoulder. Tails was standing behind her, smiling from ear to ear. He was pointing toward the sky, indicating that he’d leaped high into her attack’s one blind spot she hadn’t noticed – directly above.

"You’re really good!” Tails said, catching his breath as he congratulating his friend. His smile slowly died away, however. “But, well… that's what I thought. You probably guessed it, but that wasn’t a test for me. I needed to see how long it would take for you to summon a spell in a combat situation. Under these circumstances, I don’t think anyone would even stand a chance.”

“But?” Tabitha calmly asked, patiently waiting for the bad news. Bad news was part of her daily life. Hardly anything the fox could say would faze her, she figured.

Tails broke eye contact, slightly embarrassed. “…Well, that incident on the way to the lake got me thinking. I’m not saying you aren’t a fantastic magician, you really are! But, still… that guy with the axe, he was really close. It worried me a little, thinking that you and Kirche might’ve not had enough time to cast a spell to defend yourselves. Or maybe, say, on one of your missions you were ambushed and lost your staff,” he rambled, stopping to let the thought sink in. “So, I decided I wanted to build you a little something that might help! I’ll be right back, just wait here.” 

The Mobian took off for the workshop, leaving Tabitha standing patiently out in the field. Several minutes passed before the fox re-emerged from his den, holding a small, grey, metallic device in the shape of an L and several small metal sticks. He held out the L-shaped device for her to take, watching her as she looked over every angle of the machine. As she began to point one of the ends of the L with a hole the diameter of her index finger toward her eye, Tails quickly snatched the device back. “Careful! This thing is dangerous, and that’s the business end,” he said, letting out a short, nervous sigh. “Anyway, this thing is called a handgun. It’s a replica of one my friend Shadow used to use when he worked with soldiers from Earth to repel an invading army of aliens. I downsized it a little and simplified the design as a for-fun project, so that it would be easier to conceal. It’s much faster to draw this than it is to chant up a spell, and much more lethal than whacking someone with your staff.” He handed her the small handgun, pointing toward certain features as he explained its’ operation. 

“You hold it here and point this end at the enemy by lining up this bit on the front sight in the gap between this U-shaped bit that makes up the rear sight. Once you’ve got it aimed at him, you pull this trigger back with your finger and down he goes. Don’t stop pulling the trigger until he drops. You can fire eight times before reloading with these magazines,” he said, holding up the small metal boxes. A rounded-tip bullet protruded from the top, gleaming in the last rays of evening light. “To reload, you press this button here which drops the old magazine out of the handgrip and stick a new one in, then pull this whole slide assembly back. Then you’re good to go.”

Tabitha nodded, taking the magazines from the fox and slipping them into a small pocket on the inside of her school uniform cloak. Tails waited patiently as she practiced taking a sight picture, holding the handgun at arm’s length away from her. Suddenly, a loud crack ruptured the air as she pulled the trigger, causing him to jump out of his skin. Far across the lawn, he saw the badly chipped stone in the perimeter wall where the bullet had impacted, bouncing off somewhere into the grass nearby. “Jeez, Tabitha, give me some warning next time!” he said as Tabitha calmly looked over the handgun once more, watching as a small wisp of smoke from the burnt gunpowder drifted out of the end of the barrel. “You need to be careful shooting at hard targets like that. The bullets can ricochette off of walls or armor if you hit them at a steep angle like that. You might end up hitting something you didn’t mean to. Anyways, I’m starving, so I’m gonna go get some dinner. It's technically Louise's night, I think, so I’ll be outside if you need me.”

Stowing the pistol in her cloak pocket, Tabitha nodded in thanks and walked off toward the dining hall, leaving the fox to his thoughts. “Well, that went well, I suppose,” he thought as he made his way to the kitchen. “At least I don’t have to worry about that any more…”


	27. Season 1 Chapter 27

CHAPTER 27:

Tails was eating peacefully at his table, watching the familiars as they sat around outside, waiting to be fed. Occasionally, a student would slip out of the dining hall to feed their familiar, bringing forth a plate or two of whatever was being served that night. It didn’t take long for Saito to find his way over, carrying a plate of his own loaded down with Marteau’s heavenly food.

"Hey, mind if I join you?" Saito said, sitting down.

"Of course," Tails replied. “Did you see who was waiting for you in Louise’s room?”

"Yep,” Saito replied with a nod. “She said that someone will pick us up tomorrow morning. You ready? It's gonna be a long one, I think."

Tails looked out across the lawn, watching as the motley crew of monsters cheerfully played with each other. "As ready as I can be. I’m not a fan of being thrown into the middle of a conflict, but we just gotta roll with it, right? I'm more surprised that the Princess wants to ask Louise. She doesn't even have to be involved in this."

"I think the Princess knows that Louise would want to. She’s probably her closest friend. If anything, I’d think she’s only trusting us by extension of being Louise’s familiars,” the boy explained with a sigh. He scooped out a big spoonful of cheesy vegetable casserole and dug in, immediately regretting his decision. “Ah, shit that’s hot!” he exclaimed through a mouthful of food.

Tails let out a short laugh as he watched the boy scramble for his water glass, washing down the molten cheese as fast as he could. "Fair enough. Hey, I'm headed up to bed. See you in a bit," Tails said, hopping up from his seat. He picked up his dirty dishes and carried them back to the kitchen, dropping them in a stack that was slowly starting to amass on the counter. “I wonder if Louise is telling Kirche and Tabitha about the mission,” he thought as he walked back to Louise’s dorm room. To his surprise, when he arrived, he found Princess Henrietta still resting on Louise’s bed.

"Is something wrong?” he asked, surprised. “Did Louise not drop by? I thought she would’ve dropped by when Saito did.”

Henrietta shook her head."No, unfortunately not. Saito came up to the room alone, while Louise was in study hall. I’m sure she’ll be here soon," she replied, a little wearily.

"Yeah, but, right now she's probably just chatting in the dining hall, holding you up. You sure you don't want me to get you something to eat or drink? You've been in here for hours."

Finally, after a moment of thought, she relented. "A glass of water would be nice, if you don’t mind."

Tails nodded, cracking a grin. "Sure. You might as well lay down and take a nap, she might be a while longer yet. I'll be right back." He turned and shut the door behind him, running back down to the kitchen. Digging through the cupboards, he grabbed a glass and filled it with water from the indoor well. He paused by the door on his way out, plucking an apple out of one of the hanging bins and writing it up on a small notecard, signing his name on it. “Hopefully borrowing glassware doesn’t get me in hot water with him,” he thought as he made his way back to the room.

Stepping into the room, he found Henrietta and Ring in the middle of a conversation. She was giggling at something Ring had said when she looked over to the fox, nodding in appreciation as he handed her the glass and fruit. “Your friend here really has quite a sense of humor!” she remarked. “Thank you very much for getting this for me.”

“It’s no problem. I’m glad he wasn’t bugging you too much. I’d almost forgotten I’d left him in here,” Tails replied. He took a seat at Louise’s writing desk once more, looking down to his sword-spirit companion where he’d left him on top of the desk. “What were you guys talking about?” he thought, trying to reach out to the spirit in his mind.

“Oh, nothing,” Ring replied smugly. Tails knew this was a lie, and that if the sword had a face, he’d have a shit-eating grin plastered from ear to ear. “You might want to pay attention to your guest, though,” he added.

Tails looked up to the princess, noticing that she was looking down at the apple she held, gazing into its’ bright-red skin like a mirror. “Miles… may I ask you a question?” she asked. All humor had left her voice.

"Sure, what’s up?” he replied.

Henrietta sat quietly for a moment, slowly running her thumb over the apple’s smooth surface as she thought. "Is there still war on your world? Do you still live with the burden of massacre?"

"Well… yes and no,” Tails said. “We haven't had an all-out war between countries or races for a very long time, but many times we've had dictators try to take power by force. That name I mentioned earlier, Dr. Robotnik. He was one of them. He had enslaved most of the Mobian population, turning them into mindless robots to do his dirty work. He’s dead now. Then there was the Metarex, a group hell-bent on wiping out the Seedrian race. They’re gone as well…" His speech trailed off, a flood of bad memories leaving a bitter taste in his mouth. It hadn’t crossed his mind that he’d actually bitten his tongue with his sharp canines in his silent rage, the taste of blood tainting his throat.

"I see… Thank you,” she replied. She looked up, smiling at the fox once more. “Sorry to seem so depressing. It just popped into my mind. I’ve never talked to someone from another world until I met you and Saito.”

“It’s fine, don’t worry about it,” Tails said, secretly nursing his tongue in his cheek.

Suddenly, the door flew open, nearly scaring Tails into biting his tongue again as it slammed into the wall next to him. Louise flew into the room with Saito in tow, dropping to one knee in front of Henrietta. Before Louise could even get a word out, however, the princess stood up from her bed and pulled her pink-haired friend to her feet, embracing her. "It's so good to see you again, Louise. Thank you for all of your hard work, all of you," she said.

"I'm so glad that we could be of service to you, Princess," Louise said. All signs of her usual hostility were absent from her voice as she spoke. “I’d swear I’d think she’s faking it if I didn’t know they were childhood friends,” Tails thought to himself.

"I have another task, if you are willing,” Henrietta continued. “Tails and Saito can share the instructions, as they have already volunteered. I would like you three to take this ring, as it will help you prove yourself as my trusted messenger," Henrietta said, handing Louise a ring from her finger. "I must head back to the castle now, but it was wonderful seeing you again! Feel free to visit when you have the chance. I always enjoy your company!” With that, she made her way to the door, her uneaten apple still clutched in her hand.

The door had hardly closed behind princess Henrietta before Louise turned on her two familiars, eyeing them suspiciously. "…Ok, what have you two been hiding? Why didn’t you tell me her majesty was waiting for me until now?” she asked, her voice slowly rising.

"We weren’t hiding anything, honest,” Tails replied, shaking his head. “I even asked Henrietta if she wanted me to come find you, but she told me not to disturb you.”

"Fine. So what is it the Princess wants us to do?" Louise continued, placing her hands on her hips. Saito promptly recited everything the princess had told him, nearly identical to what Tails had been told. "She also said that someone was to be picking us up tomorrow morning as an escort. Sunrise, to be specific," he added.

"Well, if they’re going to be here early, whoever it is, then we'd best get to sleep. Saito?"

Saito stepped forward and helped Louise with her cloak and dealing with her clothes while Tails made himself comfortable on the hay bed allotted to him. Within minutes of Louise blowing out the lights by hand, everyone was in bed and asleep, anxiously awaiting the new day.

* * *

 

“Hey, get up!” a voice called, cutting through the murky blackness of Tails’ sleep.

Saito attempted to wake Tails up by shaking him by the shoulder, but it wasn’t until Louise smacked her riding crop against the foot of her bed with an earsplitting *crack!* that the fox bolted upright. "We almost slept in, so hurry up!” she yelled. Hurry up and get ready, our escort is most likely already outside!" Louise yelled. Tails scrambled to his feet to collect his belongings, slipping into his gloves and red-and-white shoes before cinching down Ring’s sheath.

Suddenly, something smacked him over the back of the head, causing him to briefly stumble. “What was that for?” he yelped, rubbing the back of his head.

"Sleeptalking,” Louise said, rolling her eyes. “I couldn't get a wink of sleep because of you two idiots. I’d be half convinced you two just talked all night and didn’t get a wink of sleep if your conversations weren’t completely unrelated."

"Oh. Sorry about that.”

"Yeah, well, whatever. Let’s go.” Louise tightened up the clasp on her cape and marched out of the room, setting her riding crop in a drawer of her writing desk by the door on the way out. Saito and Tails followed her down the stairs and out to the Academy’s main gate. There, a tall, short-bearded man in matching blue robes and a flamboyant hat adorned sat upon some weird creature with the body of a lion and the head and fluffly feathers of an eagle. Louise was, for some reason, thoroughly overjoyed at the sight of the man. She rushed over to his side, embracing him in a hug as he dismounted from his odd-looking steed.

"Wardes! I had no idea it was you that would be our escort! It's great to see you again," Louise exclaimed. She stepped back and motioned to Tails and Saito as they made their way over. "This is Saito and Tails, my two familiars. Please excuse their rudeness, they can be a bit unruly at times."

"Well, excUUUUUUse me, princess! Someone's gotta speak up when you're wrong," Saito said, grinning at his own snarky humor. "So, how do you know each other?”

Louise glanced up at the the man for a moment. "Wardes worked for my family when I was a little kid. He was almost a second father to me, in a way. He since moved into the ranks of the Griffon Knights, becoming their captain.”

"It's good be with you again, Louise," Wardes said, his voice a deep baritone that complimented his rugged looks. "I suggest we get moving, as it will be late by the time we reach the port if we leave now. Especially if we have someone walking, since Maxwell here can only carry so many so far when flying,” he added, affectionately patting the creature’s head. The griffon let out a low, un-bird-like rumble in affection, eyeing Saito intently with one of its’ unnerving golden eagle eyes. “Seems like he likes you, Saito!” The man joked.

“Well, if it gets us there any faster, I can fly,” Tails offered.

Wardes looked over the fox curiously, trying to determine how such a feat was possible. “Well, if you can, that would improve things tremendously. We still most likely won’t be able to fly the whole way, however. Anyhow, shall we head off?”

The hulking griffin crouched down, allowing its’ master to assist Louise onto its’ back before he and Saito climbed aboard. “Let’s see how well you keep up!” Wardes declared as the griffon climbed to its’ feet, unfurling its’ impressive feathered wings. The beast let out a daring growl, eyeing the fox one last time before it turned around toward the open path away from the Academy, breaking into a sprint. With a few blasts of its’ wings, the griffon was airborne.

“Two can play at that game!” Tails called. Double-checking that his sword’s sheath was plenty secure, he started running after the creature with his hand at the ready on his wristcomm. His rocket shoe modules sprung into life with a roar, lifting him a few inches off the ground as he skated down the path, picking up tremendous speed. Spinning up his tails, he could feel himself lifted into the air, quickly gaining altitude as he’d done so many times before. It wasn’t long until he roared past the griffon and its’ riders, startling Wardes and the beast alike.

“That’s quite something, I must admit!” Wardes called to the fox over the rushing wind that whistled in his ears. “Maybe we’ll have to properly race when we have the time!”

Tails gave the man a thumbs-up as pulled back alongside the griffon, matching their speed. “So, how far is this place?” He yelled back.  
Wardes pulled up a small compass from a pocket in his outfit, checking and adjusting the group’s trajectory by a few degrees. “Depending on how long we can stay airborne before Max gets tired, it could be anywhere between a few hours and the rest of the day. I’d speculate we’ll stop for lunch and make it there sometime in the evening to see if we can catch a ride to Albion by tonight.”

“Right, sounds good,” Tails replied with a nod. Bringing up his wristcomm once more, he summoned his T-Buster from hammerspace and extracted a Power Ring from the device’s storage slot to prepare for the long flight ahead.

* * *

 

The day passed in silence as the group flew, only slowing down to give Tails and Wardes’ griffon a few breaks, as well as a brief lunch stop. The sun was only a few degrees above the horizon when they arrived at their destination; upon a mountain-like hill surrounded by a small town sat a gargantuan tree that had long since turned to petrified wood. Several floating wooden sailing ships like the one Tails had rescued Princess Henrietta from lined the “branches” of the tree, using the ancient wood as a hard tether like a dock.

“Wow, what a sight!” Saito spoke with awe, looking up at the floating ships’ keels from their shadows as they climbed the stairs up to the tree. “It’s like a fantasy-world version of an airport!”

“Yes, well, it IS called an airport…” Wardes replied. “So, Louise, you've become quite the prodigy I've heard! Not just one familiar, but two, and a human as well! You've really grown up since I last saw you.”

"Well… that doesn't mean that my magic has improved…" Louise said shyly.

"I'm sure you have your own talents when it comes to magic," he reassured her.

Tails and Saito looked at each other, sharing an incredulous look. "Are you sure about that?" Saito asked.

Wardes looked back at Saito with distaste. "Her majesty Henrietta sent me because she wanted to ensure her childhood friend got the help she needed, not for any lack of her capability, if that’s what you are implying," he retorted.

Tails tuned out the group’s small talk as they climbed the mountain, observing the design of the airships with utter fascination. “I wonder what kind of magic they have to use to keep these things permanently aloft,” he thought.

“Oh, they enchant the wood that makes up the interior framing,” Ring said, popping into Tails’ mind without warning. “They’re a relatively new invention, as they came about some time between when I was with my last master and now. The concept of enchanting objects for flight has been around for ages, though.”

“Huh, neat,” Tails mumbled. Picking up on his words, Wardes looked back to the yellow fox curiously. “Sorry, what was that?” He asked.

“Nothing, just thinking. Sorry,” Tails replied. “So, how long have you been working for the Henrietta now?”

“Oh, I’ve always worked for her majesty,” Wardes replied as he crested the last of the stairs. “Even when I was serving Louise’s family, it was on her orders. It’s the Griffon squadron that’s been the most recent change, but I’ve still been serving among their ranks for many years now. Also, we’re here.”

Over the edge of the last of the stairs, Tails could see a cluster of wooden buildings nestled in between two of the tree’s massive roots. Behind them, a slim set of stairs scaled the tree, heading up toward the heavens for nearly the entire height of the tree.

"So when do we have dinner?" Saito asked.

"As soon as we purchase the tickets. The dining hall is open at all times, for travelers. The tickets serve as a meal voucher, incorporated into the ticket fare. You three can head in and find a seat while I get Maxwell settled and purchase the tickets."

"Alright, I'll go find the dining hall. Louise, you hungry yet?" Saito asked.

Louise shook her head. "No, I'll go with Wardes to purchase the tickets. We'll meet up with you afterwards. Tails, go with Saito. Get us a good seat, please," she instructed.

"Alright, will do," the fox said. The group split up as Louise and Wardes entered one of the front-most wooden buildings with a portrait of an ink quill and piece of parchment on a sign over the door, while Saito and Tails followed their noses toward the dining hall.

"Hey Tails, is it just me, or do you sense a little something between Louise and Wardes?" Saito asked as he walked. He seemed concerned, in a focused manner that gave him a serious air.

"How should I know?” Tails replied, thinking up a more proper response. “He seems fond and slightly protective of her, but that doesn't necessarily mean a relationship. Nah, if you like her, go for it. Don't let him stop you.”

"Eugh, no way, I don't like her like that. It's just that… there’s something about him I just don’t like. I can’t place it, but I feel like he’s… I dunno. Super passive-aggressive. Everything about him screams ‘Louise is mine’, and I just can’t get over it. Familiars are supposed to protect their masters, right?”

"Oh. I guess you could see it that way. They’re clearly old friends, and Louise herself said he’s a bit of a father to her. Maybe he’s just being a sort of a protective dad.”

Saito only blankly nodded in response, still trying to figure out how to phrase his concerns. “Hey bro, he's totally thinking about Louise,” Ring said in Tails’ mind.

The fox looked away from Saito, rolling his eyes. “You don’t say?” he thought.

“Yeah yeah, keep rolling your eyes. You might find a better comeback in that nerdy brain of yours back there. Pardon me for trying to be helpful.”

“If anything, I’d probably see your ugly mug. I wouldn’t wish that on anyone, even the Metarex.”

“Now that’s more like it!” Ring chuckled.

After a few minutes of asking around, the two boys found their way into a diner-style cafeteria that was relatively empty, save for a collection of drunk old men who Tails guessed worked at the docks above them. They took a seat at a table farther back into the restaurant, taking the time to undo their folded napkins while they waited. Tails reached for a menu, only to find that he couldn’t make heads or tails of the language. “Right, forgot about that,” he thought.

“Can I get you two anything to drink?” A waitress asked. Tails hadn’t even seen the lady approach, but somehow she was already waiting patiently at the edge of the table.

“Uh, just water for me,” Tails said.

“Same here,” Saito added.

The waitress nodded and walked back to the kitchen. Just as she returned with their drinks, Louise and Wardes returned, joining them at the table. After thoroughly interrogating the waitress about the menu, she returned with four heaping plates of food. Tails took a spoonful of stew, a beef-based broth the waitress had called stovarij, and blew on it for a bit to cool it down. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see Saito glancing at Wardes between bites of his own dish, some mix of tuna salad and peaches. Wardes was doing the same, careful to avoid eye contact with the boy.

Hardly ten minutes passed before the tension rose to a head. "So, Saito, how about a duel? I'd like to see whether you truly are able to protect Louise, as her familiar," Wardes stated calmly.

"Wardes! Is that really necessary, here of all places?" Louise asked, bewildered.

"It's about time I determine whether this boy is capable of protecting my fiancé."

Tails inwardly cringed at Wardes’ remark. “Man, that age difference is waaaay too big,” he thought. “Are they really gonna try to fight here?

Saito dropped his silverware and stood up, slamming his chair back. "Alright, Wardes, you’re on!"

Despite Louise’s protests, Wardes pushed his chair back and stood up, motioning for everyone to follow him. He stepped outside, drawing an odd-looking sword that resembled a training rapier – a white, blunt-tipped circular rod made up the blade, ending in an ornate handguard and pommel of finely wrought gold. Saito walked in the opposite direction, turning and drawing Derflinger from the scabbard on his back. The freshly-sharpened sentient blade glimmered in the evening light, reminding Tails that he was using a proper weapon to duel, while his opponent wasn’t. "Don't kill him, Saito. That wouldn't go down too well with the Princess,” the fox said, looking around. Behind him, he noticed that the old, obnoxious drunkards who had been making a racket at the front of the diner were now completely silent, their faces nearly pressed up against the front window to get a good look.

"Yeah yeah, I gotcha. Just give us a countdown to start,” Saito growled.

Tails looked back and forth between the two combatants, making sure they were ready. “Alright, uhh… Three, two, one, begin."


	28. Season 1 Chapter 28

CHAPTER 28

Saito skidded to a stop, recovering from another tough blow. He was beaten and weary, his breath heavy from exhaustion. Wardes, on the other hand, was calm, collected, and hardly even scuffed up. Only two of Saito's blows landed throughout the whole fight, and only after Wardes had put in many solid blows, through physical sword strokes as well as magic from the weapon’s blunt tip.

Wardes, deeming his opponent beaten, returned his rapier to its’ sheath with a muted click. “As I thought. Unable to protect her,” he declared. “I understand why the Princess allowed me to come, whether or not she knew of my relationship with Louise.” He turned to Louise, extending a hand. "Come, Louise. I am going to head to bed. I will show you to our room."

"OUR room? Wardes, don't you think it's a bit… soon? We aren't even engaged, and I'm not even sure, yet…" Louise mumbled, confused.

"I see. Your feelings aren't solidified yet. Very well, I'll share a room with Tails for the evening. You can have a room to yourself, until we leave tomorrow morning.”

“Wait a second,” Tails butted in, holding up his hands. “I thought the airship left tonight?”

Wardes fished into his pocket, retrieving four rectangular pieces of paper coated in writing. “I forgot to mention it over dinner. The ship that normally makes the evening run between Albion and this port was slightly damaged by a high-altitude windstorm, so they decided to push the annual maintenance forward instead of doing patchwork repairs. The desk clerk gave us free hotel rooms for tonight, until the other airship servicing that route returns from Albion to pick up the slack. We’ll leave in the morning.” He handed two of the slips of paper to Tails and handed a third to Louise before turning his back on the students and walking away. “The hotel rooms are this way, whenever you’re ready,” he called back, pointing around the corner of the dining hall building. Then, he disappeared around the corner.

For a moment, Louise looked back at Saito, torn between following Wardes and staying with her familiars. Opening her mouth to say something to Saito, but decided it’d be best to leave him be. She turned and jogged off after Wardes, her cape fluttering behind her as she went.

“That asshole,” Saito muttered contemptuously. He jammed Derflinger back into the scabbard on his back and dusted himself off, picking bits of rock and dust out of the front pockets of his hoodie. “I knew he’d try to show off.”

“Yeah,” Tails agreed. “Maybe it’s just how things work around here, but I still find all these forty-something-old dudes falling in love with sixteen-year-old girl. First that Count dude with Siesta, now him. Maybe-”

Saito held up his hand. “Just do me a favor and shut up,” he muttered.

The two boys started to make their way to the hotel. Hardly twenty seconds had passed before Tails decided to press on. “If you need to talk, I’m all ears. At least ten per-”

“I said shut up!” Saito yelled. Tails took a step back, a bit shocked by the boy’s sudden outburst. He didn’t strike Tails as someone who would get riled up over a loss in a sparring match.

Saito turned to look back at the fox, his face taking on a hardened appearance. “Just leave me alone for a little bit. I’ll see you tomorrow.” With that, he took off toward the hotel, leaving Tails behind.

Ring popped out of Tails’ sheath. “Man, he really doesn’t like that Wardes guy. Maybe you should go talk to him again after he cools down a bit.”

“No, it’d only make things worse, for sure,” Tails replied, shaking his head. “I’m more worried if Louise tries to talk to him. Someone like her could do a lot more harm than good.”

“Well then you better go find her before she finds him. She’s actively thinking about him back in her room, and I think she’s about to move.”

“Alright, I'm going.”

Tails took off toward the hotel, weaving through the small streets lined with tourist-focused shops as he followed the street signs. It didn’t take long for him to find the hotel backed up against the massive roots of the petrified tree, breezing through the front door straight to the check-in desk. Several bored-looking staff members and concierges looked up from their card game as their new visitor approached. “How can we help you?” a lady with braided blond hair asked.

“Have you seen a tall-ish, black-haired guy with a blue-and-white jacket and a sword on his back walk in?” Tails asked, looking around the reception hall. “Also, I need to check in,” he added, handing the lady his flight ticket.

“Yes, he came in not too long ago. He didn’t bother to check in, just went down the hall that way,” she said, pointing to the left of the desk down a hallway. “There are rooms down that way, but he could’ve gone up the stairs toward one of the balconies as well… Are you part of the Wardes party?”

“Yeah, he’s with us.”

The receptionist nodded and handed the fox his ticket. “Your party has three rooms checked out, rooms thirty-seven, thirty-three and thirty-two. Have a good night, and good luck finding your friend!”

“Thanks!” Tails said, taking off down the hall. He rushed up the stairs to the third floor, looking around for the two rooms the receptionist had given him. “Any signs of Saito around?” Tails thought to Ring.

“He’s out on the balcony to your left,” Ring replied. “Wardes is in one of the rooms to your right, and Louise in the hallway to your left and around the corner, coming from her room.”

Tails took off down the left hallway, coming up on a small open archway that led outside to a small stone cliffside built directly into the petrified roots of the tree. Poking his head out, he could see Saito leaning up against the stone railing, looking down over the distant landscape as he chatted with Derflinger. The sun was almost below the horizon, its’ warm orange light outlining distant clouds like an artist’s brush.

A short, quiet cough from behindcaught Tails’ attention. He looked back to see Louise standing on the other side of the archway, glancing back and forth between Satio and Tails. Her face was questioning the situation; her eyes lacked their usual fierceness, replaced instead by embarrassment. Tails ducked back into the hallway and silently ran his hand horizontally across his neck in a throat-slitting gesture. Louise ignored this warning, however, and crept out onto the balcony, waiting for a break in Saito’s conversation with his sword before announcing her presence. “So this is where you were,” she said.

"Do you need something?" Saito asked, rubbing his eyes.

"Are you… crying?"

"Leave me alone."

"You were facing the Captain of the Griffon Squad! He's the head of Her Majesty's royal guard. Losing to him-"

Saito shook his head and turned to face Louise. Tails, barely peering around the archway, could see that his eyes were a little red. "That's not it. I… just had a bad feeling that I might not be able to see my parents again."

"Okay. Anyway, as long as you’re in Halkeginia, you’re my familiar. Got it? You'll look after me and… protect me, too…" She moved to put a hand on his shoulder, but Saito quickly brushed her off. "Why don't you have Wardes protect you, if he’s so good?"

Louise took a step back. "So you ARE upset that you lost!"

Saito rolled his eyes and turned back to the balcony. "I'm not upset about the loss. He just… gets on my nerves, that’s all."

"Get ahold of yourself! You're a man, right?"

Louise grabbed Saito's shoulders and shook him a little, trying to snap him back to reality. Without warning, Saito shoved her away with his elbow, turning to face her and yelling at her to shut up. His face melted from anger to surprise for a moment as Louise backed away, but regained his resolve and turned back to the sunset as focused as before. Louise started walking back to the archway, not lifting her eyes from the ground. As she reached the archway, she paused and looked back at him once more. "Saito… I'm going to marry Wardes," she mumbled.

Saito raised his head, clearly shocked by the news, but refused to show any weakness by looking back at her. Tails gave her an “I told you so” shrug as she passed, watching her quickly disappear into one of the rooms just down the hall from the balcony. Seeing that the damage was done, he decided against pressing Saito further and returned to the stairwell, hunting down room thirty-seven from there. Inside, Wardes was lying on the only bed in the windowless, rather plain room; the only color to contrast the brown wood and grey stone was Wardes’ blue jacket and hat, hanging on the headboard of the bed. A large cot with a single pillow was set up in the corner of the room near a small desk. A few oil lamps hung from the walls, casting a yellowish glow on the stark room.

"Oh, hi Mr. Wardes. Sorry to barge in on you, I forgot we were sharing the room," Tails said, shutting the door behind him. He kicked off his shoes near the door and undid the belt holding Ring’s sheath to his side, setting the sentient blade against the doorframe.

Wardes propped himself up against the headboard. “It’s not a problem. Unfortunately, although the rooms are free, they aren’t the most well-furnished of arrangements. I had an extra cot brought in, but it's too short for me. Do you mind if I take the bed?"

"Not at all. A cot is a bit of a luxury compared to the hay pile Louise has had me sleeping on,” Tails replied. He walked over to the simple portable cot and took a seat, slipping his gloves off before laying back. “I've pretty much set up to move out, since she's very willing to use that riding crop of hers should one of us give her the sliver of a reason to."

Wardes let out a deep laugh that filled the bare room. "That's my Louise! Always had a short temper, she did. Probably the way her parents treated her, I suppose," he said, his humor dying away quickly.

"How did her parents treat her, if you mind me asking? I haven’t spent much time with her, being split between three masters and all."

"From an employer's standpoint, they were well paying, blunt, and concise with their orders,” Wardes explained. “No room for error, but they didn't care how the job was done. I'm guessing that militaristic attitude was equally directed at her as it was myself. Being a small child, she never was able to cope too well, always hiding out in a small rowboat on the lake. I would paddle out to her and give her reassurance, so I suppose she sees me as more of a father figure than her own parents, at times. That's my guess as to why her emotions are so mixed right now."

Tails nodded. “Don't you think Louise is a bit young to be getting married? Even back in my world, human women wouldn't marry anyone more than a few years older or younger than them, unless they were gold diggers looking to steal an old rich man's inheritance. And they often didn't get married until they were at least in their mid-twenties or so. I’m sure it’s the same in Saito’s world, if it’s anything like the Earth I met Chris on."

“Mid-twenties?” Wardes asked, mildly surprised. “How old do people live in your world?”

"I remember reading in a book that the longest recorded lifetime was around one hundred and five years old. Most people live to their seventies or eighties. Sixties is considered dying young, in most cases. War shortens that, obviously."

Wardes simply sighed, resting his hands behind his head. "I wish I could live that long. I'll most likely end up dead within the year, if this business in Albion continues."

Now it was Tails’ turn to be surprised. "Why is that?"

"I suppose no one told you? The leaders of the coup against the Albion Royal Family are looking to dominate the world. Tristain is naturally the best target after they finish building an army, due to our relatively small fighting force. Besides, I've been heading many missions to support the Albion Royal Family where I can, since the Princess was looking to marry the Prince. She's truly in love with him, you know."

Tails let out a thoughtful “hmm”. “It’s a shame she has to give that up for the safety of her country. Well, best of luck to you in your fights. Sorry to bother you."

"No no, it's not a problem! It feels good to talk to someone outside of the nobility, as equals, not as a captain to his men or a subject to his lord. Not to mention, you seem much more sociable than Saito. I don’t think he’d have spoken a word, given the chance! Thank you." With that, Wardes blew out the candles around the room with a short, wordless wind spell, allowing darkness to consume the room. Tails fell asleep rapidly, after the exhausting day of travel.

* * *

 

Tails was seated at his sofa, surrounded by Sonic, Amy, and some of his other friends. Scarfing down the last of his sloppy, chili-coated hotdog, the blue anthropomorphic hedgehog looked over to his foxy friend and pointed to his head. “Bro, wake up!” he said, his voice unusually gruff.

“What?” Tails asked, setting down his own plate on the livingroom table.

“Wake up!” he repeated. Suddenly, the world snapped to blackness as Tails began to wake up. His eyes snapped open as he sat up, trying to take in his dark surroundings. “Is it still night? He didn’t light up the lamps,” Tails thought as he rubbed his eyes.

“No, it’s the morning. I saw Wardes get up, but I thought something was up when he didn’t wake you. I’m tracking him now, he’s climbing up the tree with Louise!”

“What the hell?” the fox thought. After a moment of peering in the darkness, he noticed that Wardes wasn’t in his bed. He rolled out of his cot and picked up his gloves, sliding them on as he fumbled his way to the door. Slipping on his shoes and picking up Ring in his sheath, he slammed the door open and bolted down the hall, nearly falling over on the cold stone as he slid to a stop in front of Saito’s door. He shouldered the door open, scaring Saito awake from the noise as he barged into the room.

“What the hell, Tails?” Saito asked, wide awake and jumpy from the rush of adrenaline in his veins. “What’s going on?”

“Something’s up with Wardes!” Tails exclaimed, waving for him to get out of bed. “I don’t know why, but he snuck out of his room and is taking Louise up the tree to the ship!”

“Ah fuck!” Saito swore. Colorful obscenities and death threats streamed from the boy as he rolled out of bed, slamming his feet into his shoes and struggling into his signature hoodie. “How far up are they?” he asked as he strapped Derflinger to his back once more.

“About halfway up the tree, from what I can see tapping into Wardes’ vision from his memory,” Ring declared. “I’m going to lose range on them soon if they keep going any higher.”

Tails spun around and took off for the stairs, with Saito hot on his heels. The two boys leaped down the stairs and blasted through the reception hall out of the hotel, frantically looking for the way up to the docks. Tracing the path of the stairs down the roots to its’ base, it wasn’t long before they began scaling the tree as fast as they could, rushing to catch up.

Tails and Saito crested the first length of stairs, finding themselves at a small, flat plateau on top of the tree’s roots in order to change direction up the length of the tree’s trunk. The peal of a large bell filled the air, filling his chest with its’ metallic tone. "Great, that's probably the departing bell! We gotta move!" Tails called over the deafening noise.

Suddenly, the ground shook violently, causing Saito and Tails to lose their balance. The ground in front of them split open, spitting out a hulking stone golem some two stories tall. Like last time, an all-too-familiar figure stood on it's shoulder, cackling wildly. "It's about time I was given a chance to gain revenge! I'll crush you this time!" a feminine voice called.

The figure threw back its’ hood, revealing the long, ugly dark green hair of a certain thief they knew. "Fucking Fouquet, you gotta be kidding me…" Tails thought.

Over the din of the bell and the golem, Tails thought he could hear a rhythmic whoosh, like the bellows of a forge. Fouquet looked off toward the horizon, squinting to get a view of the source of this noise.

"Hey, old hag! It's us you want to be worried about!” Saito yelled, drawing Derflinger.

Fouquet snapped back to attention, glaring down at the young man. "I. AM. NOT. OLD! I'M ONLY TWENTY-THREE!" she fumed. Under her control, her golem reached down to grab Saito, only to be intercepted by an icicle as large as its’ tree-trunk-sized arm. The would-be thief was stunned as her golem staggered backwards, trying to collect itself enough dust to form another arm.

“I don’t think so!” a new voice called. Tails broke his focus on the golem, looking off toward the horizon. There, he saw a blue dragon approaching at incredible speed, coming to a stop just over the plateau with a blast of its’ wings that nearly knocked him down the stairs from the draft. Tabitha, Guiche, and Kirche were all riding on the dragon’s back.

"Guiche, care to set us up the bomb?" Kirche asked, wand at the ready.

"With pleasure!" Guiche declared with his usual panache. He drew his wand, a straight-stemmed red rose, and gave it a flourish. A storm of rose petals erupted from the iconic flower, clinging to the golem’s stony body. The golem lashed out against its’ assailants, but Sylphid easily dodged its’ swipes, flying out of its’ range. When the golem was thoroughly coated, the rose petals spontaneously decayed into fragrant rose oil, soaking the behemoth and Fouquet with the slippery, sweet-smelling goo.

"…And for the finishing touch!" Kirche yelled, dousing the now-soaking golem with fire with her own spell. With a blinding flash and a wave of heat, the golem and its’ rider burst into flames. Tails winced and looked away as Fouquet fell, screaming until she hit the ground. Then, her voice cut out; only the sound of crackling flames and the steady whoosh of Sylphid’s wings filled the air.

“Holy shit,” Saito said, shielding his face with his arm from the heat of the flames. “She’s so far beyond dead…”

Looking back at the woman’s burning body, Tails just about threw up as the sickly sweet scent of rose oil mingled with the smell of burning flesh, the acrid black smoke causing his eyes to water. “Damn it, Kirche!” he thought as he pushed past the burning mess, making his way up the stairs toward the upper docks. “No time to stop! We still need to save Louise!” he yelled.

Suddenly, a wave of darkness overtook the stairs. Above the group, an airship pulled away from the dock, blocking out the sun as it passed overhead. “Ring, is Louise and Wardes on that ship?” Tails asked.

“I can’t… oh wait, wait for it…,” Ring said, concentrating as hard as he could. “…Yeah, they are. They’re right at the edge of my range… and they’re gone.”

"Then we need Sylphid!” Tails dashed back down the stairs to the plateau. Sylphid landed on the flat, rocky surface as far away from the burning pile of rubble as she could, lowering down to let Saito and Tails onto her back. “After that ship!” Tails yelled to Tabitha, pointing toward the craft as it slipped into the distance.

Tabitha nodded and tapped Sylphid’s head with her staff, redirecting her attention to the escaping airship. With a nod, Sylphid readjusted herself and leaped into the air, her wings beating hard against the air as she rushed to pick up speed. Despite her best efforts, however, the dragon was unable to keep pace with the ship carrying so many passengers. The airship slipped further and further away, headed for Albion.

"Damn it!” Saito blurted, slamming his leg with his fist in frustration. “This was my fault. If I hadn't provoked Louise last night, she wouldn't have run off with Wardes so easily. I'm gonna kill that sonovabitch, you wait and see."

“Wait, a second, what’s going on?” Guiche asked. He seemed thoroughly confused. “Why is she on that ship without you two?”

Everyone ignored Guiche, knowing full well it wasn’t something Saito wanted to talk about. Derflinger rose out of his scabbard. "Calm down, partner. You need to be able to see straight when you fight him. He's stronger, so you can't go trying to face him head on. It wasn't your fault, I think Louise had some partial feelings for him, so she was easily swayed. You'll have to be even more careful killing him, since it may push Louise even farther away from you. He's a childhood friend for her, and she hasn't seen his dark side yet. We have to make sure she sees that before you kill him."

Ring perked up, too. "Good idea. What about having Tails here draw him out? He knows he can beat Saito, so he may choose not to engage, but with Tails, he doesn't know what he's up against. He'll be more cautious with him around, I'd bet. Saito can sneak around and grab Louise wherever they may be, and when Wardes attacks, one of us can bag the kill and we all book it back to Tristain before anything goes wrong."

"Do we even know where they'll be headed?" Kirche asked. She still seemed somewhat somber after what she’d done to Fouquet, but Tails knew that wouldn’t last long.

Saito shrugged indifferently. "Princess Henrietta gave me a letter, but I handed it to Louise. She said to take it to him in a chapel where he was hiding. I don’t think asking around will help if he’s in hiding, but maybe we could find it near the airport. If he’s really that backed into a corner like Henrietta said, then he’d want an easy escape. It’d make sense.”

“That’s more like it, partner!” Derflinger encouraged. “Hopefully we’ll make it there by the evening, before Wardes can act on whatever plan he has for Louise.”

* * *

 

The five flew for the entirety of the afternoon, with Tails occasionally flying under his own power to reduce Sylphid's load. As the sun reached it’s maximum, a landform came into view.

"Is that place… flying?!" Saito exclaimed, watching with awe as they approached the floating island.

"Yeah, you didn't know?” Kirche asked in surprise. “Albion is a flying country. It was raised out of the sea a long time ago by the act of many powerful magicians, enchanting things called wind stones deep underneath the island. It's why they are so skilled in dragon piloting and airship sailing. Even Germania's second to them on a pilot-skill basis, which is really saying something given their love of anything war-related."

"Wow. That sounds pretty impressive," Tails remarked, watching a distant river cascade over the edge of the island into the sea below. "It reminds me a lot of Angel Island back home. It's a flying island too, but it uses the power of a thing called the Master Emerald to fly. It’s not magic, but it sure seems like it sometimes. Hey, look!”

Off in the distance by the river, Tails could make out airships lined against the edge of the island, tied to man-made docks for loading and unloading. “Even if they had his griffon, I bet he couldn’t have gone too far. If Saito’s right, we should start looking for chapel-like buildings.”

Under Tabitha’s direction, Sylphid began to lose altitude, hugging the treetops as she approached the docks. She dropped below the trees into a small clearing, coming to a complete stop with a few back-pedaling blasts of her powerful wings before setting down. As soon as her passengers dismounted, she tucked her wings close and fell on her side, curling up into a ball to take a nap.

“Thanks, Sylphid,” Tails said, patting the dragon on the head as he passed by. “You did great.”

Tabitha walked over and tapped Tails on his shoulder with the curled tip of her staff. "This way," she said, walking off into the woods. Tails jogged off after her, leaving his friends to quickly catch up. It wasn’t long until they reached a small church with a fenced-in graveyard out back, seperated from the port town by a dirt road that winded through the woods for a ways.

“Ring, can you sense anyone inside?” Tails thought.

"Yeah. Louise is in there, as is Wardes. Louise is freaking out. Her body isn’t responding to her mind, like she’s under a spell or something. Some dude in pretty nice clothes surrounded by knights is lecturing to the two of them. That must be princess Henrietta’s love interest who has the letter.”

Tails nodded and waved Saito over to him. “Okay, this is it. They’re in there. You ready?” he asked. The boy nodded fiercely, drawing his own sword. Tails walked around to the front double-doors of the chapel and readied his T-Buster. When everyone had formed up behind him, ready for a fight, he booted up the device’s plasma cutter and ran the beam along the gap between the doors as high as he could reach. Hoping that there weren’t any locks holding the door shut any higher than that, he and Saito simultaneously planted their feet against the doors, kicking them inward as hard as they could. Saito, recovering more quickly, rushed in with his sword low, ready to strike.

Just like Ring had said, Wardes and Louise were standing together at the rear of the chapel, holding hands. Behind them stood a blond-haired, blue-clad man. “Must be the prince,” Tails thought, eying the other threat in the room – a unit of heavily-armored knights whose swords were drawn and pointed at the intruders the moment the door was opened. Everyone looked to Saito curiously, except for Louise. Her face was blank, her eyes gazing off to some distant horizon behind her familiar – as if she wasn’t entirely present.

“Who’s this?” the blond-haired prince asked. “A previous lover trying to interrupt the marriage, I presume?”

“Quite,” Wardes remarked, the faintest trace of a smug grin on his face. “Come, where were we. Kiss the bride, I believe?”

“Like hell you’re here to marry her! Why’d you leave us behind at the airport for Fouquet to attack us, huh?!?” Saito retorted.

Wardes rolled his eyes, letting out an exasperated sigh. “And how is she doing, might I ask? We haven’t spoken in quite a while.”

“Put it like this. Give a man a fire and he’ll be warm for a day,” Guiche declared with a rehearsed gusto. “Set that thieving, spying bitch on fire, and she’ll be warm for the rest of her life.” The boy drew his wand, pushing his golden locks of hair back over his ears. “Damn, that’s a fine line. I’ll need to write that one down for later,” he added to himself.

“Is this true?” the prince questioned, his hand slowly moving toward his sword. The knights, torn between who to target without direct orders, looked back and forth between Saito’s group and Wardes. Their swords, still focused on the intruders however, never moved.

Wardes’ smile disappeared. With uncanny speed, he drew his rapier, pivoted on his heel, and closed the distance to the prince. A roar of wind filled the room as Wardes unleashed a spell while shoving the blunt rod through the man’s stomach. Blood violently sprayed across the back wall of the chapel with a sickening bang that shook Tails to his core as the man’s midsection exploded, nearly shearing him in half. Everyone, even Louise, now stood in shock and horror as Wardes casually wiped the blood off of the tip of his rapier on the prince’s jacket as the dying man fell to his knees, then flopping face-first on the ground.

"Look what you did, Saito," Wardes called, mockingly. "You ruined a perfectly good wedding. Killed the crown prince of Albion and everything. That just won't do." He turned to Louise now. "Louise, my darling, we can still be married if you join me and the Reconquista. We can rule the world!"

Louise jerked away from Wardes, dropping to her knees at the fallen prince’s side. "No way would I join a vile man like you!” she cried, tears filling her eyes. “I would rather die than be wed to someone as awful as you!"

Looking to the dying prince, Tails watched as he struggled to take a ring off of his hand and hand it to Louise, coughing up nearly as much blood as what oozed from the massive hole in his body. As the knights turned upon Wardes, he raised his sword to the girl’s head. "As much as I hate to say it, but since I’d rather not leave you to live out a life with miserable wretches like your parents, or him,” he muttered, nodding to Saito, “I can arrange that. But perhaps you might enjoy seeing HIM die as well!" Wardes turned his “sword” to Saito, charging a spell at the blunt rapier’s tip.

The knights that lined the walls rushed forward with swords drawn, but Wardes was faster. He leaped back to the priest’s podium and reached his sword out to the nearest knight, jamming the tip of the rapier through a gap in the man’s armor at his neck. The man’s head popped clean off as Wardes fired off the spell, splattering his comrades with his blood. Tails and Saito tried to get into the fray, but not a single opportunity presented itself until most of the knights had suffered a similar fate.

“That’s enough, Wardes! You and me!” Saito yelled, rushing at the man with his sword low and ready for a swipe. Tails watched in horror as his friend rushed past him to meet his inevitable doom. At least, he thought, if he didn’t act.

“Ring, shield Saito now!” he yelled, shutting down his T-Buster’s plasma cutter. Blue energy blinked into existence around Saito’s figure moments before Wardes loosed his magic, throwing him across the room an into the thick stone walls of the chapel near the door. Completely unfazed thanks to Ring’s shield, Saito hopped to his feet and rushed in once more, successfully evading a second spell by a few inches. His Gandalfr runes on his hand were glowing bright, reassuring Tails that his friend really did have his game face on.

“Tails, we need help out here!” Guiche yelled into the chapel. The fox turned around, finding that his other friends had evacuated the building. Looking back one last tim as Saito and Wardes’ battle raged on, he decided Saito would be fine and sprinted outside to help his friends.

Surrounding the chapel, men armed with axes and crude leather armor rushed out of the forest in an endless onslaught – but not without resistance. With every wave of his rose wand, Guiche summoned man-sized golems of metal that fearlessly rushed their foes, ganging up on the incoming axemen to overcome any lack off finesse. Kirche and Tabitha were no worse for wear, spewing flames and torrents of icicles with impunity, but despite their best efforts, it wasn’t quite enough. One axeman had successfully weathered Tabitha’s icy storm and was closing quickly. Tails raised his T-Buster to take a shot, but before he knew it, two loud cracks split the air and the man fell, howling in pain before being silenced with a third shot, thist time to the head. Tabitha stood motionless with the handgun Tails had made her held low, gunsmoke still rising from the barrel.

Tails ran over to her side and began taking shots with his T-Buster, stunning foes to the ground as fast as he could pull the trigger. “Great shot, Tabitha! Keep it up!” he said. She looked over at him, her face as emotionless as ever, but something about her in that moment struck Tails as odd. He couldn’t quite place it, but it didn’t matter; he didn’t have time to think about that kind of stuff at the moment. Drawing Ring in his left hand, he rushed forward to meet an oncoming soldier head-on, catching him with a surprise taser charge from his T-Buster point-blank. Quickly burying the tip of Ring’s blade in the back of the fallen man’s neck as he passed by, Tails bounced from target to target. Occasionally, his work was interrupted by a burst of fire or an icicle impaling his target before he was done, but he paid it no mind so long as the threat was neutralized.

It wasn’t long until the last target dropped to his face, dead as can be. In the trees at the edge of the clearing, Tails could see the last of the soldiers fleeing for safety as he readied his T-Buster once more. “Well, I think that should do it. At least everyone’s safe,” he thought. Then, it hit him. He turned back to the chapel, finding the inside now a firey inferno as the wooden pews and fabrics burned, belching smoke through open windows around the chapel. Moments later, Saito and Louise emerged, exhausted but relatively unharmed. Louise was holding whatever the fallen prince had given her in his last moments in her trembling, clenched fists.

Saito looked up from Louise, his face weary with exhaustion. "Alright guys, let's go home," he said. “Wardes got away. Prince Wales is dead."


	29. Season 1 Chapter 29

CHAPTER 29

A heart-wrenching scream filled the throne room, echoing off the stone walls for what seemed like an eternity to Tails. Henrietta was sobbing uncontrollably, her face buried in her hands as she sat hunched over on her throne. Not a single word that anyone in that room could say would soothe her, Tails knew. He’d been there before. It almost moved him to tears to see someone going through the same, painful realization that your loved one was gone.

Finally, the weeping ceased. Henrietta slowly stood up from her chair with Louise at her side, helping her to her feet. Unclenching her first, she donned prince Wales’ ring, adorned with a deep-blue gemstone of unparalleled cut and clarity. Tails could see that it was a sister ring to one that Henrietta was already wearing, topped with an equally-shaped gemstone of a deep purple hue that matched her hair. “An engagement ring?” he thought.

Henrietta cleared her throat and wiped her eyes, addressing her few remaining friends with a wavering but genuine smile. "Thank you all, for all the hard work you’ve done. Kirche, Guiche, Tabitha, I can't begin to thank you enough for your help. I might have lost my friend Louise as well if it weren't for your timely assistance. Tails, Saito, thank you for doing such a splendid job of protecting Louise. So many times I’ve relied on your assistance, and you answer the call without hesitation. Thank you!” she said, bowing to the fox and young man each. “I think its’ best for you all to return home for some well-deserved rest. Please keep Tristain's peace in your minds as we prepare. Again, thank you all."

"Princess, why are we praying for peace? Are we under attack?" Louise asked.

The princess looked to her pink-haired friend, placing a hand on her shoulder. “Louise, if what you said is true, then Wardes was working with the Reconquista. Tails, you and Saito know them as the political opponents I referred to on your earlier missions,” she said, looking to the two of them. "Now that the Reconquista has eliminated the final heir to the royal throne of Albion, they’ll look to gain militaristic support from the people of Albion and begin their conquest. We have spies within their ranks that had confirmed these plans many times over – it was their focal rallying cry to raise troops. Although we are preparing what we have, it might not be enough. “

“What about Germania?” Kirche asked, nearly in shock. “Surely they would still honor the marriage proposal and offer their aid?”

“No,” Henrietta replied, shaking her head. “My letter to Wales was either stolen, or intercepted and duplicated. While you were gone, my intended husband informed me that he’d recieved the letter and secretly called off the marriage for the sake of saving face. Working on his own, he can give us only minimal support, which leaves us with squadrons of knights, a leaderless griffon squadron, and as many magicians as we can muster from the nobility.”

“So what should we do, your majesty?” Guiche asked.

“I ask that you please keep this secret from your fellow students at the Academy. I wish to avoid worrying them if I should ask for their families to assist me with their magic. When you return, please tell Headmaster Osmond what you know about the Reconquista, and that I would ask him to defend the students. That’s all,” Henrietta concluded.

Everyone silently rose and headed for the door, but not before gave the princess a final farewell hug. They made their way through the castle halls, their footsteps echoing through the labyrinth of stone. Outside, Sylphid was napping on the smooth flagstones just outside the castle doors, sunbathing on the warm path. With a snap and a whistle from Tabitha, the dragon instantly perked up, ready to depart.

* * *

 

The moment Sylphid touched down at the Academy, Tails dismounted and immediately made his way to the Headmaster's office. Everyone but Kirche followed; the red-haired Germanian decided she had some business to attend to on her own. “Probably going to write to her parents,” Tails thought as he began the intense trek up the stairs to Headmaster Osmond’s office. “She said her parents are in the military. Maybe she hopes they’ll lend Henrietta some support on her behalf.”

"How does Headmaster Osmond even stand hiking up and down all of these stairs?" Saito remarked. The group hadn’t even made it halfway up yet, and yet they were already slowing down.

"Pretty sure he used to have Fouquet bring him food, and he never left the office until he had to," Louise explained. "I never even saw him leave the office unless something important came up, like a visit from the Princess or something. I can't imagine that's terribly fun."

"No wonder he still thinks about Fouquet all the time. Pervy old man," Ring said.

Tails groaned and rolled his eyes. "Eugh, too much information, Ring. Keep that stuff to yourself.”

After a thorough hike up the massive central tower of the Academy, the group arrived at the doors to Osmond’s office, finding them wide open. Inside, the elderly man was seated at his usual desk, conversing with a small, beady-eyed mouse in between deep, lung-filling draws of his pipe. A new attendant was also seated at Fouquet’s old desk, handling some paperwork on Osmond’s behalf.

“Come in, come in!” Osmond declared, waving his students into his office. “You all look rather somber. Is something the matter?”

Everyone stepped inside and took a seat in the plush armchairs that surrounded a coffee table in the center of the room. As Louise explained the situation and relayed princess Henrietta’s instructions, the old man’s expression shifted from a caring, old-man smile to something more solemn. "Very well. Thank you for your input,” he replied, pushing his chair back to stand up. “I will see to it that defenses are shored up around the Academy. You may go."

Louise, Saito, and Tabitha stood up and turned to the stairs to leave, but Tails proceeded across the room to the window in the back. Taking a moment to undo the latch, he pushed the window open and casually hopped out, hurtling to the ground some twenty stories below. Using his tails to guide his descent, he came to a swift stop just above the grass, gently touching down. “There’s no way I’m hiking that many sets of stairs again,” he thought as he jogged across the lawn to the workshop. Inside, he found Colbert packing for a trip; a bag stuffed to the brim with maps and alchemical documents lay strewn across his workbench, accompanied by a wooden case that he was currently busy filling with vials of various liquids. "Hi Professor Colbert! What are you up to?" the fox asked, shutting the door behind him.

"Oh, you’re back!” his favorite bald professor replied, turning to greet him. “I'm packing for a trip to find a rather special dragon being kept somewhere over by the village of Talb. With any luck, we might have a new Nature dragon.”

"Nature dragon?” Tails asked, his interest piqued. “Is that, like, the fire-breathing kinds, or like Sylphid?"

"If you are referring to Miss Tabitha's familiar, then yes. Sylphid, as you call it, is a wind elemental dragon. The others you faced in saving princess Henrietta are a more common variety, bred for combat. The only proof I've been able to find of this special dragon's existence is a genealogy report, and a sample of bodily fluids purchased from a descendant of the family. Some crazy man that runs a bar in town, but it's the best lead I've found so far.” Colbert reached into his wooden travel case and withdrew a small flask of a translucent, golden-brown liquid. "Be careful. It’s extremely volatile. I think this could be a rare ancestor of the fire dragon!” he excitedly explained. “My hypothesis is that it has a natural gland that produces this liquid, combining it with its’ saliva to produce flammable gels as projectiles."

Tails gave the cork flask stopper a whiff and almost gagged, handing the flask back to Colbert. "Professor, that's gasoline,” he replied. “Either this salesman duped you, or this ‘beast’ you’re hunting down is a machine."

"Really?! What do you know of the liquid? What can you tell me about the… thing?" Professor Colbert blurted, drawing up a stool to take a seat. Tails couldn’t help but share the Professor’s contagious grin that reminded him of a kid in a candy store.

"Gasoline, also known as petroleum, is a refined product of crude oil,” Tails explained, taking a seat of his own. “It’s a carbon-based chemical fuel composed of various combinations of carbon and hydrogen, such as octane, made by the decomposition of organic matter. That’s stuff like animal bodies, skeletons, and smaller micro-organisms. You take crude oil and boil it to separate it into its’ different parts, then evaporate off the top layer and condense it into a separate container. What you get from that is gasoline.”

“And this crude oil you speak of, where could we find some?”

“Crude oil can be found in the ground by mining, especially around swamps and places where animals would have died and been quickly buried by the silt. Deserts are also a good bet”

“Do you think this might be technology from your world?” Professor Colbert was in dream land at this point, imagining what kind of technological pot of gold lay at the end of his journey.

Tails shrugged. “It could be. Gasoline isn’t a huge thing on Mobius like it was back on Earth when I was with my friend Chris. I don’t know how Saito’s world differs from the Earth I’ve been to, but I’d say it’s more likely something from his world than mine.”

For a moment, Colbert looked crestfallen, but perked back up right away. “So other technologies similar to the Staff of Destruction? You think it’s really a machine that flies like yours?”

"I dunno. It’s clearly a motorized machine, but I just couldn’t say. It could be a lawn mower for all I know. But, if people are mistaking it for a dragon, then I’d be willing to bet its’ a plane or helicopter of some sort.”

"Right. I leave tomorrow, but you’re welcome to come with me if you like. It’s almost lunchtime as it is, so I should probably go get some lunch before I need to teach again. Shall we head out tomorrow morning, at sunrise?"

"Sounds good!” Tails said. “I need to do some preparations of my own, if we’re going hunting for this thing. I’ll see you later.” He walked over to the corner of the room and lifted the trapdoor, climbing down into the hole.

“Oh, Miles!” Professor Colbert called from the workshop above. “I, uhh… spent some time down in your workshop and noticed you were running low on supplies, but you didn’t leave me a list. I had one of your old lists in my bag and repeated that order. Let me know if you need anything else!” With that, Tails could hear the door click shut as the professor stepped out of the building, leaving the fox to his thoughts.

“Perfect, just what I needed,” Tails mumbled, looking over to his 3D printer as he dropped down from the ladder. Just as Colbert had said, a pile of various metals and jars of powdery materials awaited him, ready for use in his work. “I wonder what I should do next… I suppose I’ll need to assemble a travel bag with some tools, if we actually find this thing. Maybe some excavation equipment as well, if its’ stuck…” He ¬¬pulled up his HUD device and began swiping through his old blueprints, humming a few old tunes as he read…

* * *

 

Fastening the last of the blasting caps to one of the many small devices he’d made, Tails set the explosive charge down on the table, looking over his work. All said and done, he’d managed to get through several projects at once with the supplies Professor Colbert had left him. On the bench lay more ammunition for Tabitha’s handgun, a couple pairs of night vision goggles that used Power Rings as battery sources, and a variety of explosives ranging from napalm brush-burning charges to remote-detonation bombs he’d just completed. “You can never have too many explosives on a good adventure,” he thought to himself, fondly remembering his times on Cocoa island. “I wonder how my robot pet T-Pup is doing… I hope he hasn’t gotten into any trouble.”

Yawning, Tails grabbed a screwdriver and walked over to his hammock, flopping down on the canvas to stretch out and relax for a little while. He pulled up his T-Buster and unscrewed a small panel on the side of the device, revealing the arm-cannon’s intricate internals. The Power Ring generator, the core of the device and its’ chief power supply, hummed away as smooth as always. “Too bad I don’t have the tech to build a new dimensional anchor,” he thought, looking deep into the device’s internals at a small chip the size of a few stacked quarters. “I’d be able to re-build my old bomb glove upgrade so I wouldn’t have to carry all those live explosives around in a bag.”

In the workshop above, the sound of the front door opening and clicking shut broke the silence, followed by footsteps.

“It’s Tabitha,” Ring announced.

“I figured. Professor Colbert said he was going to teach makeup summer classes. I didn’t think he’d be back so early.” Tails replaced the panel on his T-Buster and fastened the screws back into place, stowing his T-Buster as Tabitha slowly climbed down the ladder, her staff and book tucked under her arm.

"Hey Tabitha," Tails said, sitting up in the hammock. "Great shooting yesterday. I’m glad it helped. I made you some more primed bullets over there on the workbench, if you need to replace the ones you used or want to practice.”

Tabitha nodded and set her staff against the wall, stepping over to the edge of the hammock. "Sorry, let me get out of your way," Tails said as she began to sit down, swinging his feet over the edge and beginning to get up, but Tabitha stopped him. She held her book, which he recognized as the novel he’d seen her reading in the evenings so often, out to him as she took a seat. "Shall I teach you how to read?" she asked quietly.

Tails looked at her with surprise, slightly shocked that a sentence consisting of more than five words had left her mouth aside from her sleep-talking. “Yeah, sure!” he said, snapping to his wits. He wrapped his tails around him onto his lap and laid back, dangling his feet over the edge of the coarse canvas. Tabitha, pulling her cloak off to her side, laid back next to him and opened the book to the first page, pointing to the first word led by a brilliantly ornate illuminated manuscript letter. “The,” she said.

Tails chuckled to himself, a deadpan glare from Tabitha. “Sorry, it’s just exactly what I expected it to be,” he said. “Right, sorry to interrupt. The.”

Tabitha turned back to her book, adjusting her glasses and pointing to the next few words. “Story. Of. Ivaldi…”

* * *

 

Hours evaporated as Tails lay in his workshop alongside Tabitha, listening to her calmly recite the story of the hero Ivaldi and his adventures to save a princess. Occasionally, he would repeat some of the more complex words to practice odd pronunciations until they felt weird to say. Before he knew it, the two reached the end of the novel, the rhythmic, chant-like recitation of a story coming to a close.

"Thanks for that, Tabitha. It was fun! I think I’m starting to get the hang of it," Tails said, letting out a brief yawn. "Oh, yeah, let me see your handgun for a bit. It probably needs to be cleaned and reloaded after you used it."

Setting her book aside, Tabitha reached into the pocket of her cloak and pulled out the handgun and spare magazines, handing them to the fox. Tails hopped out of the hammock, careful not to tip Tabitha out as he went. He unloaded the gun, carrying the small device and its’ magazines over to his workbench where he’d left his toolbox. “Hey Tabitha, you may want to come watch. I’ll show you how to disassemble it for cleaning,” he said as he pulled open one of the toolbox’s many compartmentalized drawers.

Tabitha stood up and strolled over as the fox withdrew one of many small oiler cans, reading a label to check it was the right one before setting it aside. “So, everything about the gun can be disassembled without tools, and its’ pretty straightforward,” he said, beginning to disassemble the firearm. Locking the slide back, he adjusted his grip to hold a small button in front of the trigger guard down while rotating the exposed front of the barrel with his other hand. He gently pulled the barrel out of the gun and held it up toward one of the ceiling lights, looking down its’ length. “I used a scratch awl to number every part in the order that they should be re-assembled, starting with the empty frame as number one,” he added, setting the barrel aside.

Within a few minutes, the gun was thoroughly dis-assembled, with each of the thirty-five parts laid out on the workbench. Tails reached into a different compartment of his toolbox and withdrew a couple of grease-stained rags and some methyl ethyl ketone. “So, this is stuff you probably won’t come across too often, since its’ made specifically to counter nitrocellulose, which is what I made the gunpowder from,” he said, holding up the small glass bottle before setting it aside. “Not a huge issue, though, as you can clean it with water so long as you’re sure to get each part completely dry to prevent rust. It just takes longer and more work.” Unscrewing the lid of the bottle, he held a rag over the mouth of the bottle and briefly tipped it upside-down, soaking a small patch of the fabric. Wiping the carbon-fouled parts down with the rag took the flaky black substance right off, revealing shiny steel once more. With every part clean and dry, he took a second rag and soaked a corner of the fabric with the oil can and wiped every part down with that, giving them a brilliant shine. When his work was done, he stepped aside. “Now, it’s your turn. I’ll stay here if you need any help, but I’m sure you can figure out how to reassemble it.”

Tabitha nodded and stepped forward, picking up the bare frame of the gun. After a few moments of thoroughly inspecting its’ design, she reached for a small part and flipped it over, revealing a coarsely-etched “2” scratched into the metal. Suddenly, everything about the design clicked and she began assembling the firearm nearly as fast as Tails had disassembled it.

Tails watched with a secret glee as Tabitha screwed the barrel back into place and dropped a small lever on the back of the gun, letting the pistol slide jump forward with a satisfying mechanical click. “That was really fast!” He remarked, stepping forward to the workbench once more. “It took Shadow nearly a whole day to get that fast. He almost broke his trying to jam everything back together in frustration,” he added, laughing. The fox scooped up a handful of the bullets he’d made earlier and began loading the empty magazines Tabitha had used up, handing them back to her as he went. When he was done, he turned and headed for the ladder. “Oh yeah, by the way,” he said, stopping at the base of the ladder. “I’m not going to be here tomorrow. Professor Colbert invited me on a trip to go on a treasure hunt. He’s pretty certain he’s found some more tech from Saito’s world, like that rocket launcher Saito used. We’re leaving tomorrow morning at sunrise if you want to come. Anyway, I’m gonna go grab some dinner, so I’ll be out at my table if you need me.”

With that, he climbed the ladder and stepped out of the workshop into the evening air. He made his way over to the kitchen and slipped inside, saying hello to the lower chefs and waiters that paused to greet him amidst their work. The kitchen seemed a bit more sparse than usual, with several of the faces Tails had grown familiar with now absent. Tails watched idly as Siesta busied herself loading several carts with clean dishes, waiting to be rolled out to the dining hall for setup. Looking up from her work, she smiled and gave him a short wave before turning back to the dishes.

"Tails, good to see you!” Marteau roared over the din of his crew upon seeing the fox enter his domain. He was standing head-and-shoulders above everyone else upon his favorite footstool, observing the work of his subordinates from above. “How’s my favorite familiar been?”

"Pretty good!” Tails called back. He made his way over to the head chef and shook hands with him, secretly clenching his teeth for a moment as the man’s iron grip hurt his hand. “Been working for the Princess for the summer, getting things done. How about you?"

"OK, I suppose,” the man sighed, letting go of Tails’ hand. “As you can see, we’re running a bit low on help. Everyone’s been packing up and moving back home before the war makes travel impossible. Eventually, I’ll be the only one here."

Tails gave Marteau a curious glance. "How’d you guys know? The Princess told me to keep quiet, and I haven’t heard anyone else talking about it."

"Some call it gossip, but for people like me and others who work with Osmond directly, its’ an intelligence network. More often than not, the civilians know about things like this long before the Princess announces it. Usually through maids, waitstaff, or other civilian jobs overhearing a loudmouthed noble in the Palace. Here." Marteau let out a sharp whistle, catching the attention of his entire staff. Locking eyes with one of the outgoing waiters and motioning toward the Mobian beside him with his head was more than enough instruction for a member of his well-trained crew; the man promptly turned around and brought back the cart of food he was pushing, handing a platter to the yellow fox before rushing back toward the dining hall.

"Fair enough,” Tails said with a shrug. “Anyways, thanks for the food! Looks great, as usual."

"You're darn right it better be good!” Marteau chuckled. “Otherwise I'd be out of a job! Have a good evening."

Tails nodded and took his plate, picking up a set of silverware on his way out. Not bothering with table cloths or anything fancy, he carried his food out to the small wooden table he’d made over by Saito’s bathtub and took a seat, unrolling his silverware from the cloth napkin.

"What do you think this thing that Colbert is hunting down could be?" Ring said, his telepathic voice cutting through Tails’ thoughts.

“I dunno. You heard me talking to the Professor, right?” Tails thought, slipping a bite of chicken pot pie into his mouth.

“Yeah, but surely there’s something more you could say about it? I’m sorta curious, myself.”

“Ring, it’s not like I go around sniffing gasoline all day. I lose enough brain cells putting up with you, most of the time,” Tails thought with a smirk. “I can’t tell you what Mr. Colbert’s sample came from, or even if its’ a high octane rating or not. If it runs on gasoline and Is mistaken for a dragon, it’s probably a plane. It could be a helicopter, but I doubt it. If its’ a plane, its’ likely a propeller-based engine rather than a jet, as most jet engines require a special fuel that isn’t at all like what Colbert has.”

It didn’t take long for Tails to finish his food with no one else to talk to. Piling his dirty silverware on his plate, he carried the dirty dishes back to the kitchen and deposited them in one of the many washbins. He made his way back to the workshop and, finding that Tabitha had left already, laid down on his hammock and dimmed the lights with his wristcomm. “Wake me up when Colbert’s outside waiting for me, Ring,” he thought as he stretched out, tucking up his tails underneath his head. Shutting his eyes, he reached out and pushed off the wall, setting the hammock in a rocking motion as he slipped into sleep.


	30. Season 1 Chapter 30

CHAPTER 30

With a burst of blinding light and color, Tails found himself gliding through the twisting, rolling lands of Green Hill Zone, his rocket shoes providing a cushion of air between him and the ground to skate on.

“Hey, bro!” a familiar voice announced. Tails glanced to his left, noticing his speedy blue friend Sonic at his side, matching the fox’s speed. With a silly grin, the hedgehog took off at full speed, zipping through one of the many unnatural-looking loops that made Green Hill zone so famous. As he followed his friend, though, the world around Tails began to grow dim and colorless, a sudden chill overtaking his body. Exiting the loop, he could see two hulking figures in the distance; two faces that evoked a nameless fear and rage deep within him. Sonic was nowhere to be found as Dark Oak, the massive armor-clad leader of the Metarex, and Black Doom, an ethereal, horrifying alien lord, approached. Clenched in Dark Oak’s hand, Tails could see a terrified-looking Cosmo looking back at him, her sapphire eyes silently pleading for him to run.

Dark Oak, noticing that Tails was staring at the Seedrian girl, held her up to his face and laughed. "Miles, you pitiful fool. You can never save her, and you know it,” he roared, his gravelly voice fueling Tails’ rage.

“You fucking bastard!” Tails yelled as he skated forward, throwing all of his weight into a shoulder-first tackle at blistering speed. Black Doom intercepted the blow, catching the fox in one hand and tossing him to the ground. Whether from the sheer terror or the mind-numbing pain of so many broken bones, it was all Tails could do to crawl to his feet, his shattered tails hanging limply behind him.

"Wake up and smell the dead roses, Miles Prower,” Dark Oak declared, slamming Cosmo down to the ground at the fox’s side. Speechless and in tears, Tails dropped to his knees, all thought of the pain pushed aside as he cradled her broken, lifeless body in his arms.

“Wake up, and see that your efforts are futile. Wake up, and prepare to die. Wake up…"

Dark Oak’s voice began to change. Suddenly, it hit Tails that something was off, and the world faded to black. He snapped awake, sitting up in his hammock. His face was bathed in a chilling sweat, his breath heavy.

“Goddamn, you get some scary dreams dude,” Ring said, still laying on the workbench across the room where Tails had left him. “Who were those two?”

Tails rubbed his eyes and turned up the lights with his wristcomm. “You saw that?... The one holding the flower-eared girl was Dark Oak. The other was an alien known as Black Doom. He tried to invade earth and used my friend Shadow against us for a while.”

Ring sat silently, contemplating whether or not to push the conversation. “Right, well, I woke you up 'cuz Colbert and Tabitha are upstairs waiting for you. Let's go.”

“Right, thanks.” Tails rolled out of the hammock and walked over to his workbench, wiping his face with a rag before gathering up his bombs and night-vision goggles he’d made, as well as a small assortment of basic tools from his toolbox. Satisfied that he had everything he’d need to do any field repair, he bolted upstairs and nicked a small canvas sack with a drawstring from Colbert’s workshop and headed back downstairs to pack. He stuffed everything into the bag and pulled the drawstring, wrapping a few thick cotton rags around the string and duct-taping them together to form a crude shoulder pad.

“Hey bro?” Ring said as Tails strapped the scimitar to his hip, cinching down the leather belt. “If you ever need to talk, I’m here. Don’t end up like Tabitha, alright?”

Tails smiled and pushed the sword down into his sheath. “Thanks, Ring.”

The fox clambered out of his hole, replacing the trapdoor before jogging out of the workshop to the main gate. Professor Colbert and Tabitha were waiting aside a plain-looking carriage, both carrying their staves and a small bag of their own, as well as Colbert’s wooden vial case. Tabitha was buried in a new book while she waited, not bothering to look up as Tails approached.

“Are you all set, Miles?” Professor Colbert asked. “What’s in the bag, might I ask?”

Tails unshouldered the bag, holding it forward for the man to peek inside. "Shaped charges, remote controlled wireless fuse bombs, incendiary brush-burners, offensive fragmentation bombs, and cluster munitions. Also, some night vision goggles if we need to move at night or in a cave. Oh, and some tools, in case we need to fix whatever we find.”

“It’s almost like you know where we’re going,” Ring joked.

“Well, it’s just a series of hunches, but if it’s a plane, it had to have somewhere to land,” Tails explained. “Unless its’ been maintained, it’ll need fixing, thus the tools. The runway will also be overgrown, thus the incendiaries. If they didn’t build a proper structure to house it, they might’ve stored it in a cave or somewhere away from the elements, so we’ll need the night vision goggles to see around in a cave. If we need to clear rubble, we’ve got the shaped charges and cluster charges.”

“A very well thought-out plan, Miles!” Professor Colbert remarked.

Tails rubbed the back of his head, slightly embarrassed. “To be honest, though, I only thought about as far as the tools and incendiaries. I made everything else more or less because I was bored and had all the blueprints saved on my HUD from my time at my little getaway shack on Cocoa Island.”

“Island?” Tabitha asked.

“Well, I wouldn’t say I OWN it, per se, but yeah. Several years back, I found an island while out exploring in a submarine I built with my friend Rotor, so I stopped by and built a small house there. One of the main things I found out there was an abundance of cocoa trees, so I named it Cocoa island. During my stay, I was attacked by a group of mercenaries looking to setup base, so I went after them with all I had on me at the time – a bunch of mining charges I’d been using to explore the island’s cave systems. That’s when I drew the blueprints and built these,” he concluded, nodding to the charges in his bag.

“Well, we’d best be on our way,” Professor Colbert said. He stepped over to the carriage and opened the door, holding it for Tails and Tabitha before climbing in. With a snap of the driver’s reins, the carriage was on its’ way.

* * *

 

For the better part of two days, the carriage travelled non-stop through southern Tristain, slowly curving toward the west. Around lunchtime, the carriage finally reached its’ destination; a small hamlet surrounded by vivid, rolling pastures and bordered to the west by a mountain range lay before them. Pulling to a stop, the three riders hopped out, taking a moment to stretch before paying and thanking the driver for his help.  
“So, where do we start?” Tails asked, watching as the carriage pulled away back down the road they’d arrived on.

"Well,” Professor Colbert said, reaching into his bag. He retrieved a small piece of folded parchment, undoing a small string that bound it shut. “The genealogy report states that a family by the name of Takeo came onto the records around the same time as the sightings of the dragon were reported. The dealer I purchased my sample of what you call gasoline from mentioned that it originated from this family.”

"Well, there's another clue as to what we know about the vehicle,” Tails replied. “Takeo is definitely a foreign name, and I’d be willing to bet money on it being Japanese. My friend Chris had a butler by the name of Tanaka, so he might be from that same geographic region, either of Saito’s world or Chris’. What else do we know?”

Colbert nodded his head and shrugged. “I don’t know how credible they are, but the rumors claim that the two beings came into the skies during a solar eclipse. One disappeared before the eclipse ended, but the other flew around for a while longer before landing. The man who sold me this liquid was a back-door dealer I knew to have particularly rare artifacts from time to time. Whether he stole them or not, I don’t know. Whether or not the Takeo family willingly let go of the sample, we have it and know the dragon is here."

"Alright, so we go meet up with this Takeo family, ask for a map and their permission to take the vehicle to store it at the Academy for safekeeping,” Ring suggested. “Sounds easy enough."

The three began walking around the village, stopping to ask passing farmers about the Takeo family. Following the varying instructions they’d received, they soon found themselves on the doorstep of a small cottage at the edge of the tiny town, backed up to a massive pasture bordered by a crude wooden fence. Professor Colbert stepped forward and knocked on the door.

After a minute of anxious waiting, the door finally opened, revealing a shriveled, old lady with thick glasses. “Yes?” she asked.

“Good day, ma’am,” Colbert said. “Are you Miss Takeo?”

The lady nodded. “So many visitors today. Are you with my granddaughter and her friends?”

Tails and Colbert exchanged concerned glances for a moment. “Uhh, no ma’am, I don’t think we know your granddaughter. We’re here because we think there’s a rather important weapon someone in your family brought to this world, from a different one,” Colbert explained. “With the threat of war on the horizon, we wanted to secure it and have it stored in safekeeping at the Academy.”

"Oh,” Mrs. Takeo said, muttering something in incomprehensible, most likely botched Japanese to herself. “That would have been my father who brought it here. I'm afraid most of the maps and documents about the thing he left behind was destroyed in a fire. This is our second residence, you see. The only piece remaining details how to get to the cave system you must pass through to reach where it is stored. You’re welcome to have it, if you like. Please, come in.” She turned around stepped inside, waving her guests in as she disappeared into one of the bedrooms connected to the small living room. Within a few moments, she returned carrying a small piece of parchment with charred edges.

Professor Colbert graciously received the paper, studying the well-drawn map and odd scrawlings across the paper. Glancing over his shoulder, Tails could see several lines of kanji. “Damn, now I wish I’d asked Mr. Tanaka to teach me Japanese,” he thought, mentally kicking himself.

“Thank you very much for your help, miss Takeo!” Colbert said, folding the map shut and briefly bowing to her. He led Tails and Tabitha back out of the house, turning to thank the elderly lady once more.

"Good luck finding it!” Mrs. Takeo called from her doorstep as the three began down the road. “I wish you the best in your adventures. You may cut through our field, which should cut the journey a bit short. Also, my granddaughter came home earlier today and headed out with a couple of her friends to find it herself! If you run into her, make sure to bring her home safe when you find it!"

Professor Colbert turned and waved back to her once more before hopping the small wooden fence. As soon as the lady disappeared back into her house, the bald man glanced back at Tails as he walked, a look of worry on his face.

Tails nodded. “Yeah, we need to get there before they do. No telling if its’ Albion or not. Where are we headed?”

“That way,” Professor Colbert said, pointing toward the mountains toward the west. Pulling out the burnt-edged document, he double-checked his directions and nodded. “There’s a small cave system that runs through the mountains, and apparently this place where the machine is stored is on the other side.”

“How long do you think it’ll take?” Ring asked. “Maybe we’ll catch up to whoever that Takeo lady’s granddaughter is with. She said cutting through her field was a shortcut, right?”

Tails borrowed the map from Colbert and took a look over it himself. “Hardly a shortcut. The path only had us taking one of the main roads before cutting in along the foothills. I’d say it’ll only save us ten, fifteen minutes at most on foot.” He handed the map back to the professor, careful not to damage the ancient parchment any more than it already was. “Well, let’s get going, I guess.”

* * *

 

Cutting through the sheep-dotted pastures, it wasn’t long until the three were able to find their way back to the path, working their way up the foot of the mountain to the entrance of a pitch-black cave. Stopping at the mouth of the cave, Tails fished into his bag and removed the three night-vision goggles and loosened their folded-fabric straps. “Set this base piece against your forehead and pull against this side strap, so that it tightens around the base of your head,” the fox said, demonstrating as he donned his own device. He quickly adjusted the strap that ran over the top of his head, securing the goggles snugly to his forehead before turning to help Tabitha and Colbert. “Now, just flip the goggles down over your eyes once you enter the cave. Oh, and you’ll want to take your glasses off, Tabitha. There’s a focus dial on top of the tube if you need to adjust them so you can see clearer.”

Stepping deeper and deeper into the gradual darkness, three solid clicks resounded from the stone walls as they lowered their headsets, Tails’ entire world turned a blindly bright shade of green as the device switched on, adjusting to the ambient light around them.

Colbert let out an excited gasp. "Wow, these devices work fantastically! This is amazing! You could work all night like this, never dependent on the sun!"

"Yeah, you could,” Tails laughed, “but it wouldn't be fun. It messes with your eyesight after wearing it for too long, and can make you pretty nauseous, like spinning around a lot."

The three took off deeper into the caves, the sun’s light slowly fading until only the glow of the Power Rings gave the goggles any light to work with. Eventually, the winding path came to a three-pronged fork. Two of the paths seemed to lead deeper into the mountain, while one path began to lead back upward.

"Is it my eyes playing tricks, or is that cave brighter than the other two?" Professor Colbert said, pointing toward the upper cave.

Glancing up at the path, Tails could see the walls dimly flickering, as if there were some distant light reflecting off of the cave’s walls. "Nope, you're right, it's definitely brighter,” he said. “Maybe those people Miss Takeo mentioned earlier left behind some torches as a crumb-trail to lead the way out?"

Suddenly, amidst the ambiance of the caves, a voice dimly echoed back into the chamber. "…Hey, I think I heard someone behind us! Get ready, guys!"

Tails froze, glancing back and forth between Colbert and Tabitha. Careful not to make a sound, he drew a bomb, a device no larger than a small honeydew melon with several small bumps, from his bag. Receiving a nod from the bald professor, Tails crept up into the upper path, treading as softly as he could. Poking his head around a corner a ways down the path, his vision was suddenly obscured by a burst of green as the goggles struggled to adjust to a strong light source. A girl’s scream filled the air, causing him to duck back around the corner

"What is it?!" a male voice asked, panicked.

"I thought I saw a pair of glowing green eyes over there…" the girl replied.

“Wait a second,” Tails thought. “I know those voices. Wasn’t that Saito and Siesta?” He peeked around the corner once more, toning down the device’s sensitivity in hopes of getting a better view of the people standing around the torch. Another scream filled the air.

"THERE IT IS! KILL IT!" Louise yelled. Fearing the worst, Tails ducked back around the corner moments before an explosion rocked the air in the cavern, sending the fox stumbling back down the path. A roar of splitting stone echoed through the caves as rocks knocked loose by the blast fell from the ceiling, piling up where Tails had stood moments before.

Professor Colbert and Tabitha hopped up onto the path, helping the fox to his feet where he’d tripped and fallen. “Are you okay, Miles?” Professor Colbert asked.

“Yeah, I’m fine,” Tails replied, dusting himself off and picking up the cluster bomb he’d dropped. Finding nothing broken, he walked over to the pile of rubble and tried to peek through the cracks. "Saito? Louise? Is that you?" he called.

"Tails?” the boy replied. “What are you doing here?"

“I could ask you the same. Gimme a second, we’ll be right there.” The fox held up the cluster bomb, twisting the device in half to unscrew the outer shell. Dumping the loose nitrocellulose out onto the damp rocks, he pulled out what looked to be a long cord that branched several times, with each new fuse ending in a small bomblet no larger than a golf ball. He stretched the web-like fuses out over the mass of rubble, tucking the small spherical bomblets into the crevices of the rock. “Do me a favor and stand waaaay back, guys!” he called through the rocks before stepping back himself. “Whenever you’re ready, Professor, just torch that fuse.”

Professor Colbert nodded and held his staff out in his right hand, the club-like tip of the straight staff pointed toward the fuse. Without a word, a small burst of flames spewed from the tip of the wood, lighting the fuse almost instantly. A series of small concussive blasts filled the air as the bomblets went off only fractions of a second apart. As the dust cleared, Tails stepped forward through the newly cleared path and took a deep breath. "Aww yeah, nothing like the smell of gelignite in the afternoon," he said, smiling from ear to ear.

Stepping out from behind a large boulder, Saito pointed at the fox and laughed. “You look like some special operations dude from a video game!” he joked. Kirche, Louise and Siesta emerged from behind the same rock, backlit by a flickering fire. The light began to move as Kirche’s giant salamander leaped out from behind the boulder, tackling Tails and giving his face a friendly lick.

“Hey, boy!” Tails remarked, pushing the giant reptile off of his chest as he struggled to his feet. “So it was your flaming tail we saw, huh?” The salamander happily belched a small spurt of flame and growled in response.

“So, why are you guys here?” Kirche asked.

Professor Colbert stepped forward, flipping up his goggles. “We’re here to find a machine and take it back to the Academy,” he said, rubbing his eyes to re-acclimate them to the fire-lit darkness of the cave.

“A machine?!?” Saito exclaimed, his hand flying to his forehead. “Of course, I should’ve seen that coming!”

“So, why are you here?” Tails asked, looking to Siesta. “Putting two and two together, I assume you’re the granddaughter Mrs. Takeo was talking about?”

Siesta nodded, smiling as always. “I ran into Saito after he and Louise got in a bit of a fight, and he asked about my hair-”

“Short story short, Saito thinks he’s found a way to get back home,” Louise butted in, cutting the maidservant short before she could get too deep into the subject. “Anyway, can we get moving? The sooner we’re done here, the better.”

Reunited, the group carried on along through the caves, led by the light of Flame’s burning tail light. “I wonder how he keeps that fire going,” Tails thought as he trudged along.

“Fire salamanders have slight magic affinity, a bit like dragons do,” Ring said in Tails’ mind. “They do still have other means of attacking, though, like combustible saliva like Professor Colbert suggested.”

“Huh, so that’s where he got that idea from. Wait a second, did you know it was Saito and everyone else when we found them?”

“…and if I did?”

Tails rolled his eyes. “I swear you’re out to get everyone killed, Ring. Tell me before crap like that happens! I could’ve died in that explosion!”

“I just wanted to see the look on the girls’ faces when they saw you. It was golden, man! Besides, I woulda shielded you if you were in danger.”

“My ass,” the fox muttered.

After what seemed like an eon of marching, a light finally formed at the end of the tunnel. Emerging from the cave, the group appeared to be surrounded by a dense forest.

"Hey, over there! Some sort of building,” Siesta declared, pointing off into the woods. Sure enough, underneath heavy overgrowth, the remains of a wooden building was visible. As the group made their way over, Louise seemed to notice something and split off as the others stepped up to the massive, ivy-coated doors of the building. Even after who knows how many years, a heavy, rusted padlock and chain still stood guard on the doors, unbroken by time.

“Hey, Saito, come here!” Louise called. Peeling their eyes from the lock, Saito and Tails jogged over to where the pink-haired girl stood, staring at some rock. Text was carved deep into the moss-covered rock, faded by many years of rain but still legible.

Wide-eyed, Saito dropped to his knees, running his hand down the columns of text. “Here lies Sasaki Takeo, Naval ensign, second class. May my family and country remember me with honor as I go to face my final moments far from home. Long live Emperor Hirohito. This is it!” he exclaimed. Lowering his head, he solemnly muttered something to himself before hopping to his feet, rushing back to the building with Louise and Tails right behind him.

“Ready?” Professor Colbert asked, looking to his students. Receiving nothing but pure enthusiasm from everyone but Tabitha, he touched the lock with his staff and muttered a short incantation. A bright flash of light filled the air as the professor’s alchemy disintegrated the rusty lock into dust, letting the heavy, rusted chain fall free from the massive doors. With a heave, Tails pulled one of the doors aside on its’ corroded hinges, the creak of metal on metal filling his ears. He stepped in behind the rest of the group, letting out a low whistle at what lay before him.

“Holy shit,” Saito declared.


	31. Season 1 Chapter 31

CHAPTER 31

Inside the hangar-like building, sunlight streamed through the gaps in the wood-and-iron roof where the corrugated roof had rusted away, giving the room a rustic feel. Saito walked inside alone, resting his hand on the centerpiece of the room that had awed him – a vintage propeller-driven plane, immaculately preserved down to the soft rubber of the landing gear wheels and its’ pine-green fuselage paint. A large white kanji character adorned the black-painted engine cowling, as well as a red circle and twin yellow chevrons design on the plane’s tail section.

“Yep, thought so,” Tails said, following the rest of his friends into the room. “A prop plane. Looks to be in great condition for being semi-exposed to the elements, too!”

“Not just any plane,” Saito remarked, turning to the fox. “I had a scale model of one of these in my room, back home. This is an A6M2 type 21 aircraft carrier fighter, known as the Zero. It’s one of the best long-range fighters created during World War Two, almost no contest. It’s machine guns and cannons are still fully loaded, but it’s really low on fuel.” The boy held up his left hand, showing the group his glowing Gandalfr runes. “I think I might be able to fly it!”

From the boy’s back, Derflinger popped a few inches out of his scabbard. “If it’s a weapon, you can work it, partner. That’s what a Gandalfr does!”

Professor Colbert and the others stepped up to take a look at the waiting craft, taking a few moments to inspect the details of the craft with utter fascination. “There seems to be many layers of preservation magic on this craft,” the professor remarked. “Definitely the work of a skilled mage. Perhaps her majesty princess Henrietta or headmaster Osmond knew of the craft already?”

“Maybe,” Kirche added. “So how do we get this thing out of here?”

Tails jogged back outside, looking around the hangar at the various undergrowth. “One sec, I’ll be right back,” he called as he took to the air, his tails carrying him high into the sky. Just as he’d suspected, amidst the mountain-enclosed forest, there was a visible swath of trees several hundred meters long where the trees’ heights were consistently shorter than the rest. “They must’ve cleared this area to use as a landing strip, that’s since been reclaimed by the forest,” he thought, looking around one more time before descending to the ground.

“What was it, Miles?” Colbert asked.

Tails pointed off toward the woods in the direction of the overgrown landing strip. “All of the trees for a really long way this way aren’t as tall as the ones around them. I think they must’ve had a landing space here at one point.”

“Could we clear the trees to give it room to take off?” Louise asked. “I’m sure Kirche could make short work of all those trees.”

"Maybe, but that would be a lot of work to control the blaze,” Tails said. “I brought incendiary bombs to do that, but I didn’t think it’d be on this scale. We’d probably end up torching the entire forest.”

"It’s a naval variant, so the wings fold up for storage on a carrier,” Saito offered. “Do you think we could roll it through the caves if we tried that?”

Professor Colbert shook his head at the thought. “I don’t quite know how this storage mechanism would work, but there were some rather narrow turns and low ceilings in places. I don’t think it would fit without excavation, which could cause a cave-in as we witnessed.”

“So that leaves flying it out of here!” Louise said. “There just isn’t much of a way around that.”

Tails gazed into the forest, internally groaning at the though of all the work it would take to clear a suitable runway. “Are you sure there isn’t any other way we could get it out of here, like a levitation spell or something?”

"That would be extraordinarily difficult, but possible,” Colbert replied. “Levitation magic works by moving an object in relation to the user. If multiple people attempt to levitate the same object, their spells conflict and the object doesn't move, at best. At worst, it would be ripped to pieces.”

"But what if the magician were to hold the plane still while someone else moves the user? The plane would be carried with the magic user, because it wouldn't be moving in relation to them."

Professor Colbert thought over the possibilities for a moment, his brow furrowed as his mind ran through an endless checklist of scenarios.“Well… I can’t exactly find a reason why it wouldn’t work, I suppose,” he concluded, looking to the plane where it stood. “The spell would be quite exhausting to maintain for any decent amount of time, however. It would take two, maybe even three people to carry it for more than an hour.”

"Well, I've carried two people before for a short time with a single Power Ring, but I don’t think I could make it all the way back to the town with two of them, even,” Tails said, glancing back toward the cave. “And if we have to stop because you guys can’t keep the spell up the whole way, I’m not sure if there will be any good places to land… I MIGHT be able to carry three people with one person on my back and one in each arm, but it’d be tough.” He brought up his T-Buster and withdrew the waiting Power Ring, slipping it onto his other wrist and de-spawning the arm cannon. “I’d definitely need several of these, probably at least six,” he said, drawing Ring and detatching the golden torus from the back side of the scimitar’s weighted tip.

Professor Colbert nodded. “Well, it’s certainly best if you can carry three of us, namely miss Zerbst and miss Tabitha as well as myself. I’m not quite sure how you’ll manage that, though…” he said, looking over Tails’ short-ish stature.

“Well, only one way to find out,” the fox replied, walking back into the hangar. He hopped up onto the aircraft’s wing and unsholdered his bag as he began to look over the engine cowling, looking for something. “We’ll need to wait for my T-Buster to generate more Power Rings, which could take around a few hours to get them all done, so we can sorta relax. Personally, I’m gonna take a look over the insides of this thing since I’ve got nothing better to do.” Undoing a series of small latches on the engine cowling, a wide, thin sheet-metal panel of the cowling lifted to reveal the powerful radial engine and nose-mounted machine guns with their boxes of ammunition. “Let’s see…”

* * *

 

Looking up from his work to a corner of the HUD’s screen, Tails noticed that the clock read 4:05. “That should be the last Power Ring we need,” he thought as he set down his wrench and closed up the Zero’s engine service hatch. Pulling up his T-Buster, he found a fresh Power Ring waiting for him inside, it’s muted golden light warming his face with its’ radiating power. He pulled the glowing torus out of the red arm-cannon device and set it in a small pile of the other five Power Rings’ he’d generated through the few hours. “Alright guys, we’re good to go, I think!” he called.

Within a few minutes, Professor Colbert and the others strolled back into the hangar, still dusting any dirt off of their backs where they’d been napping out in the woods nearby. “Find anything interesting?” Saito asked.

“Well, she’s got a decent engine,” Tails said, slowly tracing the white kanji symbol on the engine cowling with his finger, “…but there’s definitely room for upgrades. Her real speed will come from how light-weight and aerodynamic she is. Conversely, you have absolutely no armor, but that shouldn’t be a big deal since we aren’t fighting conventional weaponry here. Let’s get her outside.” He scooped up his Power Rings and bag of tools and hopped down from the craft, stepping outside.

Professor Colbert waved his students aside and held his staff forward, closing his eyes. Without a sound, the plane took to the air, hovering in place. The bald man slowly stepped backward with his staff oustretched toward the aircraft, making his way across the overgrown clearing in front of the hangar as the craft followed him. When the craft was fully removed from the hangar, Professor Colbert set it back down in the grass and ended the spell. “Saito, take Mrs. Louise and Mrs. Siesta aboard the dragon. We can carry you back to Talb.”

As Saito and the two girls climbed up onto the wing of the airplane, Tails took to the air with his tails, hovering not too far from Professor Colbert. “Here, hold this for me,” he said, handing his bag of tools to the professor. He slid his six Power Rings over his arm and activated them, watching them dissolve into nothingness as raw energy flooded his body. Hovering over to the Professor, he wrapped an arm around his midsection and lifted him into the air with his now-superhuman strength. To his surprise, the golden aura of the Power Rings that enveloped the flying fox extended around the man.

“My, what power!” Professor Colbert exclaimed. “I feel so… alive! With power like this, there’s no doubt we’ll be able to get it over the mountain! Miss Zerbst, would you help me, please?”

“Right,” Tails said, waving the red-haired girl over with his free hand. He wrapped his other arm around her midsection and lifted her into the air as the golden aura enveloped her, sharing the Power Ring’s strength. “Go ahead and lift it up and we’ll get going.”

Kirche and Colbert nodded and turned their attention to the aircraft as Tabitha climbed up onto its’ left wing next to Siesta, clamping her tall staff between her legs as she continued to idly read her book. The craft soundlessly took to the air as Professor Colbert and Kirche intently focused on their spells, muttering to themselves intermittently to maintain the magic. Tails began to ascend, the energy of the Power Rings giving him the strength to lift his two passengers nearly effortlessly. As he began to pick up speed, however, Saito called out to him. “ Don’t get going too fast! It’s not like we have seatbelts!”

“Yeah, got it!” Tails replied.

* * *

 

Crossing through the closest gap in the mountains was slow going for the fox and his friends. Gusts of cold wind flowed down from the snow-tipped peaks of the mountains on either side, occasionally pushing Tails around as he struggled under the load he carried. More than once he’d almost lost his grip on Kirche as she moved about, trying to get into a more comfortable position; Louise, assuming the worst, decided it was in her best interest to glare at him every time he had to adjust his grip to keep from dropping the red-haired girl. Miraculously, however, she contained herself to no more than contemptuous stares.

Soon, the open fields of the other side of the mountains were in sight, the small hamlet in the distance dotted with smoking chimneys and lit windows. “Almost there!” Tails exclaimed as he began his descent.

“Yeah, hurry. My ribs are killing me!” Kirche said. She tried shuffling about once more in Tails’ grip, sliding backwards slightly. His grip instinctually tightened as she tried to make herself comfortable, only managing to increase her discomfort. “Can you not crush me so much?” she asked.

“Right, sorry, I sometimes forget how strong these Power Rings are. I rarely use more than one at a time,” Tails admitted, relaxing his grip. Without warning, Kirche slipped a considerable ways back, until his arm was barely wrapped around her upper torso as she dangled from his arm. “Much better,” Kirche said with a sigh, still holding her wand out toward the craft. “Rather, a change of pace at least.”

Seeing the red-haired girl’s notoriously large chest propped up on the Mobian’s arm just about sent Louise ballistic. “TAILS, YOU STOP THAT THIS INSTANT!” she yelled, hopping to her feet on top of the hovering Zero. “YOU GET YOUR ARM OFF OF HER COW BODY OR SO HELP ME-”

“I’m no cow, you magically-inept pink-haired brat!” Kirche yelled back.

“Enough!” Colbert yelled, his sudden, commanding tone silencing the two quarreling students instantly. “Don’t you dare fight while the flying machine is at stake, or I WILL have you both expelled from the Academy. Do you understand me?”  
Everyone silently nodded. Within a few minutes, Tails touched down in the first grass pasture at the edge of the tree line, setting Kirche and Professor Colbert down. The moment he let go of the two, they suddenly collapsed to the ground, asleep before they hit the dirt. Tails grimaced as the Zero dropped about a half a foot to the ground, bouncing and jostling its’ riders as its’ landing gear suspension took the shock with an ominous creak. “That can’t be good…” he thought.

“Professor Colbert!” Louise cried, darting forward to the sleeping man's side. “What happened to them?”

“Oh, uhh, sorry about that,” Tails said, looking down at the bald man as he touched down on the ground, dispelling the last of the Chaos energy from the Power Rings with a flick of his tails. “That was my bad. I shouldn’t have let go of them until I let loose the last of the energy from the rings. If you don’t release it right, it can have a bad effect on new users, like a caffeine crash on steroids.”

“It makes them super sleepy really fast,” Saito clarified, guessing that Louise wouldn’t know what caffeine or steroids are. “Anyway, now what?”

“I can go get a carriage!” Siesta offered. She hopped down from the wing of the Zero and began walking off toward the town.

“Well, we need to get the plane back to town,” Tails said. “Tabitha, do you think you could carry the plane to town by yourself, or should we try to wake Professor Colbert up first? He might be super sleepy and not much help, though…”

Tabitha nodded and closed her book, tucking it up under her arm. Without a sound, she pointed her staff toward the plane and muttered a few words to herself, sending the plane airborne once more. Tails and Saito gently lifted Kirche and Colbert up onto the plane’s wings, handing their possessions to Louise for safekeeping.

“Right, that should do it,” Tails said. “Let’s go.”


	32. Season 1 Chapter 32

CHAPTER 32

Tails stepped out of the carriage into the evening air, glad to be home after several days of being cooped up in the small, plain carriage for hours on end. He turned to watch as Professor Colbert, seated on the back edge of the carriage’s flat roof, lowered the Zero to the ground just inside the gate, setting it on the soft grass. “I think we can leave it here,” he said with a yawn, exhausted from levitating the heavy plane for so many hours of his shift. “Many of the students will have head home for the war. Headmaster Osmond had told me he planned to break the news to the students while we were gone.”

“He’s right,” Ring confirmed in Tails’ head. “The place is almost completely empty. Just a few students, a small fraction of the grounds crew and Marteau’s army of waiters, and the teachers. Speaking of which, Osmond saw you come in. He’s almost here.”

Right on cue, the massive double doors of the Academy’s central towers parted. The old white-haired man stepped through the gap, his staff in one hand and his pipe in the other. Immediately behind him, a young man with a courier’s satchel followed. "Ah, Professor Colbert! I see you found the dragon,” the old man called, walking over to take a look at the new aircraft as Saito and the others filed out of the carriage. “Very interesting. I had expected a living thing, I suppose," he added, slightly surprised.

The boy with the bag stepped forward. "A Miss Louise de Vallière is here I presume?" he asked.

"Yes, That would be me," Louise said, stepping forward.

"Her majesty the princess has requested you to join her the castle,” the messenger explained, pulling out a small parchment adorned with a wax seal to double-check his facts. “She wishes for your assistance as we anticipate the beginning of the first strike by the enemy. We expect it to occur tomorrow evening, northeast of the castle. Can you come?"

"Of course!” she replied, glancing back to the others. Her eyes stopped on Saito, who was deep in some conversation with Professor Colbert. “Wait, am I expected to come alone?"

"It's confidential, of course. We can't allow anyone who hasn't personally been requested by the Princess to come."

"Surely that was simply a small oversight on behalf of the Princess? I doubt she would purposely separate Saito and I-"

Suddenly, Saito rushed up to Louise’s side, completely ecstatic. “Louise, I think we’ve found out how I can return to my world!” he said, nodding to professor Colbert. “If he’s right, we should be able to fly back through a portal created during a solar eclipse, the same way Siesta’s grandfather arrived!”

Louise was shocked. She stood silently for a moment, pondering her choices. "May I wait until this evening to go to the castle?" she asked, turning to the messenger.

"Of course," the messenger replied. "We should leave no later than midnight, if we are to make it in time for the preparations tomorrow. You may sleep in the carriage as we ride."

Slowly, the rest of the group began to disperse. Heading back to his workshop, Tails re-packed his toolbox with the tools from his travel satchel and carried it out to the Zero, ready to give the plane the “Miles T. Prower” treatment. He had just opened the hatch of the engine cowling when Saito came out to join him. “Whatcha up to?” he asked. “I thought we knew the fighter was good to go?”

Tails pulled back from his work, looking down at the radial engine before him. "Giving the engine a quick maintenance can never hurt. It's been sitting in a hangar for who knows how many years, so there's almost no chance that it's fully functional as it stands."

"I dunno,” Saito replied, “It felt totally flightworthy when I touched it, with these rune things. Professor Colbert said that there was some pretty powerful stabilization spells, so I don't think there would be any rust or anything."

"Yeah, but it probably still needs to have the fuel tank rinsed, grease replaced and oil checked. I don't know if the stabilization spells stop chemical decay, but I'd rather not figure out mid-flight when the engine seizes up,” the fox replied, making a hand gesture that resembled a crashing plane. “We have no idea how many flight hours have been put on the clock before the guy stored it, so it may have been worn out before he landed it."

"Fine. Hey, do you think you can have it ready before tomorrow? Professor Colbert is out synthesizing more fuel, so it's up to you to work on it."

"Oh yeah, I can have it done before tomorrow. I can have it done before tonight if you want a rush order. So, tell me about what professor Colbert said about this solar eclipse stuff."

Glancing at the boy, he noticed Saito looked a bit disappointed, almost worried. "So supposedly the pilot appeared during a solar eclipse, and somehow got trapped on this side when the eclipse ended,” he explained. “According to the story, there were actually two of them, but one made it back through some portal obscured by the eclipse before it ended.”

“So when’s the next eclipse? Did professor Colbert say?”

“That’s the problem. It’s tomorrow.”

“Hey, that’s great news, right?” Tails said. “Don’t you want to go home?”

Saito shook his head. “I don't know. I sorta like living here now. I definitely have way more friends here, anyway, but I also can’t leave my parents and my friends at home for good. After hearing the messenger, professor Colbert thinks they might try to time their attack with the eclipse. I'm Louise's familiar, so I have to help her with the fight, right?"

"Hey, it’s your decision, but if you want, just head back. I can take care of things here and find my own way back with Power Rings or a wormhole or something,” Tails offered, looking Saito in the eye. “As much as I may not like her, I’m her familiar, too. If the portal only connects to your world, there’s no reason for me not to stay and help fight. This could be a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for you, though."

"You’re right, I guess. Thanks." Saito hopped up into the cockpit of the plane and took the control stick in his hands, his runes lighting up in response. “Looks like the rudder control rod is a little loose,” he remarked.

Climbing up on top of the wing to peer down into the floor of the cockpit, Tails watched as the boy worked one of two floor pedals back and forth a short ways. Looking at the rear of the craft confirmed his statement; the rudder of the craft failed to move in the slightest despite pushing and pulling the pedal back and forth a good inch or so. “Right, I’ll get on that,” he said, hopping down from the wing of the craft. He snatched his HUD device from the toolbox and gave the airplane a full scan, generating a schematic and 3D x-ray render of the craft within seconds. “Yeah, I see it. A couple of loose linkages, nothing I can’t fix. Looks like the right aileron has the same issue. Those runes of yours must be pretty handy, not needing one of these HUD’s to find all the issues.”

"Hey, glad I could help,” Saito replied, cracking a grin. “I can't wait to see people's faces when I travel back home. There are only a few flying A6M's left in the world, so flying one through Tokyo should be pretty interesting."

Tails let out a short laugh. “Yeah, no kidding! Don’t forget to ask for permission to land or you might get shot down, running around with live weapons and all. I’m just glad to have something like this to work on. It’s been so long since I’ve had a good old prop plane to dig into.”

Saito sat in silence for a while as Tails dissasembled his way through the radial engine before him, wiping out any caked-up grease and dirt and replacing it with his own cocktail of lubricant formulas. Re-sealing the engine service hatch, he carried his toolbox down to the rear of the craft and began removing body panels, revealing several linkage rods that connected the two foot pedals in the cockpit to the rudder. Several of the connecting screws were loose, only requiring a few twists of a screwdriver to tighten them up once more. Attempting to jiggle the linkages by hand reassured Tails that they were as tight as they could be, refusing to budge more than a few millimeters. "There. That should do for the internals, I suppose," he said, replacing the body panels and setting his tools back in their place in the immaculately organized toolbox. “The exterior seems clean, so we can leave it at that for now."

"Thanks a lot. I dunno about you, but I’m pretty bored. Wanna play a game?" Saito asked, giving a short yawn.

"Sure, why not? What do you have in mind?"

"Ever played Battleship?"

"Not off the top of my head. Maybe I have, maybe I haven’t. Chris might’ve had something similar on his world that we would’ve played.”

Saito nodded and hopped down from the airplane. “It’s pretty easy to learn, all we need are two pieces of paper and some pencils. I’ll go find some, be back in a second.” Tails watched as the boy took off toward one of the dorm halls, leaving him to himself. Seeing no more work to be done, he hopped up into the cockpit of the craft, folding his tails onto his lap to fit into the compact pilots’ seat to take a short nap.

* * *

 

It was almost dark when Tails woke up, somewhat sore from sleeping upright in the poorly cushioned pilot’s seat. No one was around, with only the sound of the breeze and rustle of cut grass in his ears. The infrequent, distant call of an owl in the woods beyond the perimeter wall echoed through the air like a far-off chime.

"Crap, I thought Saito would come back and wake me up," Tails thought as he climbed out of the seat, doing a couple quick yoga stretches Amy had taught him before hopping down from the plane’s cockpit. He gathered up his tools and placed them into his toolbox before latching the red box shut. Carrying his tools back to the workshop, he stepped inside and set his toolbox on one of professor Colbert’s workbenches that lined the edge of the room.

Tails’ stomach let out a low grumble, reminding him just how long it had been since lunch. “I wonder if anyone’s making dinner by now?” he thought as he stepped back outside, latching the door shut behind him. Making his way around the campus grounds to the kitchen, he noticed a lack of appetizing scents that usually permeated the air around Marteau’s domain. Poking his head inside confirmed this; not a single soul was present. A small stack of dirty dishes had begun to pile up near the washing station, most likely left behind by students who had raided the kitchen in the absence of staff preparing meals for them. “I guess everyone went home like Siesta did. Ring, do you sense Saito or Louise anywhere on the campus?” he thought.

"Yes on Saito, he's just outside the wall by the front gate,” Ring replied in Tails’ mind. “No sign of Louise. Seems like Saito’s a bit worried, it looks like.”

“Right, I guess I’ll go talk to him.”

Tails snatched an apple from the bucket near the door and stepped outside, giving the apple a quick polish on his chest fur before taking a deep bite. “I bet it’s something to do with Louise going to the castle tonight,” he thought, eating as he walked.

Looking around near the main gate of the Academy, the fox found Saito seated against the exterior of the stone wall, his straight sword sticking out of the ground between his feet. “Hey Saito, what's up?” Tails asked, taking a seat next to his friend.

“Oh, hey. Sorry I didn’t come back for you with the paper. I got distracted,” the boy said. He ran his hand over his face, staring blankly toward the last beams of light that filtered through the tops of the distant trees. "Louise left for the castle on not-so-great terms. We got in a fight, because apparently she doesn't want me to leave, so she told me to stay here.”

"I wouldn’t worry about it,” Tails replied confidently. “I mean, you’ve got your Zero, and I’ve got my X Tornado! We'll fly out and give them hell before they know what hit them and get you through the wormhole before it closes. That is, if you still wanna leave.”

"Partner, listen up to what he's saying," Derf added. "You're Gandalfr! It's your job to protect her, whether she wants it or not. She's wandering into a war zone, and here you are, moping about her not giving you permission to come! If that isn't the dumbest load of horse shit I've ever heard, then I'll go back to rusting in the discount bin in a backwater weapon shop. She only wants to keep you from leaving because she likes you, believe it or not."

After a moment’s thought, Saito got to his feet and withdrew Derflinger from the ground, sliding him back into his sheath. "Right! We’ll fly out tomorrow morning to meet them. I think there’s enough ammunition for the Zero’s guns to do it. Professor Colbert’s fuel synthesis was coming along pretty well when I checked on him last."

"There we go! That's the spirit," Ring said. “Perfect offense of the Gandalfr and perfect defense of God’s Armor. That’d scare any enemy shitless. I’ve got a good feeling about this one.”

"Heck yeah! Between us, we’ve got this in the bag," Tails said.

"We're coming, too!" A voice called over the wall. To Tails’ surprise, Kirche, Guiche, and Tabitha walked through the gate. “Guiche has to be on the ground with his dad, since he's a military general,” Kirche said, “but we can be in the air with you. You've got enough space for us, right?"

“How long have you guys been… ah, anyway, there’s enough room, but it doesn't do me much good having you in the X Tornado with me,” Tails explained. “You'd be better off fighting together on Sylphid, since the spare seats for the Tornado don’t really have any combat use. I only added them to carry my friends with me for travel.” The fox climbed to his feet, quickly dusting himself off. Right on cue, his stomach let out another grumble. “I’m gonna go make some dinner. I guess you guys want something, too?”

Guiche gave the fox one of his characteristic smirks. “Pretty much the only reason we came. Kirche had nothing but shining praise to share about your cooking, and given our unfortunate lack of servants… well, that leaves you.” Kirche only rolled her eyes at the blond boy’s statement, shaking her head in disgust that he was talking down to her familiar.

Tails just laughed it off. “Yeah, no problem. I’ll go see what Marteau left for me to work with. Any of you want to help?” Everone averted their gaze, hoping not to be called on for such menial labor. “Come on, you guys expect me to cook for nine to ten people by myself?”

“More like thirty or so. Not all of the students left,” Ring happily chimed in, as if to salt the wound.

“You’ve gotta be kidding me!” Tails groaned. “Fine, whatever. I’ll call you guys when everything’s ready. Let the others know I’ll be cooking, I guess.” He headed back to the kitchen, latching the door shut behind him. Ignoring the dirty dishes that would likely need cleaning, he headed over to the chilled pantry, throwing the door wide as he surveyed the room’s wide assortment of ingredients. Raw meats and cured sausages sat on ice-coated shelves, accompanied by an impressive array of cheese wheels and immaculately-preserved vegetables. “So, what to cook…”

* * *

 

Two painstaking hours later, two massive pots of chili lay upon the magic-fueled stove range, gently bubbling away as they filled the room with their delightful scent. Tails gently lifted the last of the sausages off of the metal grill and sliced them in half, stuffing them into sliced dinner rolls as an improvised hot dog bun. “Man, these are gonna be some killer chili-dogs,” he thought as he scraped the last of the sautéed onions from a separate pan onto the un-garnished hotdogs. “Too bad we don’t have any corn chips for the leftover chili. That’d be darn near perfect for something this nice.”

Stacking the freshly onion-adorned hotdogs onto one of the massive serving platters loaded with nearly eighty prepared coneys, he gently lifted the heavy plates onto one of the two-level serving carts before hoisting the heavy tubs of chili down onto the lower tray. Barely managing to fit two large serving bowls of salad in between the plates of hotdogs, he pushed the laden cart over to a door he’d seen waiters use so many times before. Nudging the door open, he pushed the cart into the dining hall, greeted with the hungry gaze of thirty-odd ravenous students.

"Wow, Miles. I had no idea you can cook as well!" Professor Colbert remarked as the fox stopped the cart at the end of one of the long banquet tables, gesturing for everyone to come serve themselves. A single-file line rapidly formed in front of the cart as the students hastily filled their plates.

Tails just shrugged. "Something that comes from living alone or with friends that aren't culinarily-inclined, I suppose. Even if they don’t cook, though, they’re still super demanding at times. Especially Amy..." He quickly snatched a clean plate and took a few of the half-sized hotdogs from the quickly-disappearing piles, garnishing them with the chili before filling a separate bowl with an extra dose of the meat and spice concoction. “Don’t forget to add the chili on top of the sausage! That’s the whole point!” he added.

"Thus is the way of life, Miles,” Osmond said with a wink as he filled his plate, carrying it back to his personal table at the front of the room. “No matter what world you come from, women have picky tastes. It's always the same I suppose.” He sat down and unfurled his napkin before gingerly picking up a chili-laden hotdog and taking a bite. In an instant, his eyes flew wide. “Why, this is superb! What a wonderful blend of flavors. I ought to hire you as a co-chef to Marteau!”

"If I had more time to let the chili simmer, it would be even better. More time for the spices to set in,” Tails replied, loading up a plate of his own. “Anyway, I’m gonna go do some prep work on the Tornado before bed. I’ll leave you guys to clean up when you’re done, if you don’t mind.” Retreating to the kitchen, he hastily filled up a glass of water and took off for his workshop in hopes of getting ready for the day ahead.


	33. Season 1 Chapter 33

CHAPTER 33:

Saito looked around nervously, running his hand over the engine cowling of the Zero as he waited. “Where is he?” he thought.

“Probably still asleep,” Derflinger said, popping out of his scabbard on Saito’s back to talk.

Across the lawn, he could see Professor Colbert and Headmaster Osmond working their way over, each levitating a large wooden barrel that looked like it had seen more years in a wine cellar than he’s been alive. “Good morning, Saito!” Professor Colbert said, setting his barrel that reeked of gasoline down on the ground next to the plane. “Is Tails still not ready?”

Saito shook his head. “I dunno. Maybe he’s getting something ready. Here, use a funnel to pour the gasoline into here,” he said, pointing to a small refueling port on top of the wing. “There should be one on the other side, too. I’ll go check on Tails. Be right back.”

He hopped down from the plane and jogged off to the workshop, not bothering to knock as he barged into the room. Climbing down the ladder to Tails’ workshop, he found the fox asleep in the pilot’s seat of his X Tornado, out cold from a long night of hard work. Climbing up to the cockpit, Saito shook the fox awake. “Come on, man! You slept in! We aren’t gonna make it in time if we don’t get going now!” he exclaimed.

“Huh… oh, right,” Tails sleepily replied, letting out a long yawn. “Everything’s good to go.” He lifted his wristcomm to his face, pressing one of the pre-programmed buttons for the lift elevator. With a whirr of the electric pumps, the hydraulic lift slowly began to rise out of the ground. "You ready for this?" he asked.

“You bet! Professor Colbert is putting in new fuel he synthesized overnight. We should be good to go.”

Tails hopped down from the Tornado as the elevator crawled to a stop, joining Saito as he jogged back over to the Zero. Colbert and Osmond had finished up with the refueling, waiting patiently next to the empty wine-aging barrels. “We emptied one barrel into each tank, but I don’t think it was enough to fill either one,” Colbert warned. “This ‘gasoline’ has a really high alchemical value. This was all I could make, even working all night. I hope it’s enough.”

Saito nodded and gave the two men a short bow. “Thank you for everything! If I manage to head home, I won’t be seeing you again. Otherwise, well… I’ll be back by tonight!” he added with a laugh.

“Of course, it’s been a pleasure!” Osmond replied. “But enough about that. How do we get this dragon of yours to fly?”

“You’ll need to give the propeller a good spin, once I get up inside to prep the engine,” he said, hopping up into the cockpit of the plane. Latching his seatbelt and giving it a final tug, he gave Colbert a thumbs-up. "Alright, we're good. Make sure to step back as soon as it starts."

Everyone backed out of the way, clearing a straight path between the plane and the distant wall. Saito gave Professor Colbert a thumbs-up from the cockpit as the bald man stepped up to the propeller. With a hard yank, the man pulled one of the blades of the propeller downward and leaped backward as the engine sputtered into life.

“Here we go!” Saito yelled, slamming the sliding glass cockpit roof shut as he reached for the ground brakes with his other hand. Free to move, the plane rolled forward slowly, gathering speed as it went. Powerful gusts of wind from the engine almost knocked Tails over as Saito opened up on the throttle, throwing the plane toward the wall in hopes of taking off.

A sinking feeling filled Tails stomach as he watched the plane accelerate, his mind racing. "Guys, give the plane a lift! Make a wind blow over the plane's wings, or it'll crash!" Tails yelled over the din of the engine. Professor Colbert scrambled to initiate a spell, but a sudden, bone-chilling gust that swept over the Academy grounds beat him to it. Lifted by the sudden rush of magic-induced wind, the roaring green airplane narrowly cleared the top of the perimeter wall, its’ landing gear slowly retracting into the plane’s underbody. Tails let out a sudden whoop of joy, jumping up and down in excitement. Looking around, he noticed Tabitha standing behind headmaster Osmond, her staff still outstretched as the freezing gust came to an end. Giving her a nod of thanks, the fox sprinted over to his waiting X Tornado, scrambling up into the pilot’s seat.

“Hey, Tails!” a voice called. Looking up from the jet’s control panels, Tails could see Kirche making her way over, accompanied by Tabitha. “We’re coming, too!”

“You mean on Sylphid?” he asked incredulously.

“You bet! Don’t try to stop us, either!” the cherry-haired girl declared, her voice filled with energy and just a hint of sass. Tails sighed to himself, shrugging and shaking his head. “Whatever, just don’t slow us down. I’ll try to help you where I can, but don’t get yourselves killed.”

“Come on, now. You think we just sit around learning combat spells just so we can twiddle our thumbs in a classroom?” Kirche retorted. The two girls looked at each other and shared a confident nod before turning back to Tails. “We’ll be fine. Don’t worry about us.”

“Right,” Tails said. “I’ll meet you guys topside. I need to catch up to Saito and tell him to slow down so Sylphid can catch up.” Booting up the powerful turbines of the Tornado, Tails piloted the heavy jet-mecha hybrid out of its hangar and signaled for the two girls to step back before opening up on the throttle, throwing the aircraft skyward. It wasn’t long until the jet was hurtling along over the terrain, tracking a green blip on the aerial radar that grew ever closer. Eventually, the Zero grew into view, coming alongside the Tornado as Tails eased off the throttle and gave a quick burst of the airbrakes to slow the jet down.

Donning his headset, Tails flipped a switch and set the radio to scan, hoping to pick up some return signal from Saito. "Saito, you there? Come in, over," Tails spoke into his headset.

After a moment of scanning, the Tornado’s radio honed in on a signal with a beep. "Yeah! Found the radio," Saito's voice crackled into Tails' ear, the digital noise filter distorting the boy’s voice a bit as it struggled to remove interference noise and improve the sound quality of the Zero’s vintage radio. "Are Tabitha and Kirche coming?"

"Slowly but surely. They can't keep up with either of us too easily. Cut power back about 10% for a bit to give them a chance to catch up."

Further lowering the throttle, the two aircraft slowed down as much as they could without stalling, waiting for Sylphid to catch up. Within minutes, the blue dragon shot past the two aircraft, not bothering to slow down in the slightest. Tails bumped up the throttle a few more percent, nudging the craft forward to catch up with Sylphid and her passengers.

"Saito, you know how to call your targets?" Tails said over the radio.

"You mean directionals? I think so, yeah."

"Alright. Just like a clock, just remember that. Let me know if you need help. I have you on radar, but you’re gonna have to keep track of me visually, so make sure to stay close and cover each other. Speaking of radar, large masses to our eleven. That's gotta be the fight."

“Yeah, I can see them now,” Saito replied. “I can’t see the castle, though… wait, never mind, there it is waaay off to the right. Maybe we can intercept them before the fight starts?”

Tails looked up from his radar screen in front of him, scanning the horizon. Just as Saito described, the large, pure white sails of the enemy airships sat in the distance, still quite a ways from the castle. “Sounds like a plan!” Tails replied. The fox looked over to Kirche and Tabitha and pointed forward, slowly pushing the craft forward with the throttle. Saito’s Zero struggled to keep pace as Tails gave the Tornado more power, eventually pulling in front of the antique fighter and speeding away toward the enemy. “Now, let’s see what we can do!” he thought.

Closing in on the airships like a bloodhound from hell, Tails could see enemy dragon riders scrambling to get airborne in hopes of engaging him, but in the back of his mind he knew they would be too late. A press of a trigger on the back of the control stick sent a spectacular volley of bright energy pulses streaking through the air from the Tornado, scoring several good hits on the decks of the closest airship that set the seasoned wood ablaze with ease. Magicians and deck hands frantically fired a variety of spells and arrows at him in hopes of scoring a hit, but the Tornado streaked past the craft, ready to sink its’ teeth into the next target.

“Damn it, Tails! Save some for me!” Saito said over the radio, finally reaching the battlefield in his slower craft.

“Hey, there’s still plenty of people that want us dead, Saito, so take your pick and have at ‘em,” Tails retorted, pulling the jet into a rapid climb to position himself for a diving attack. Looping the plane over to level out, he took a quick count of the total enemy fleet; some ten airships in total, each loaded to the brim with a personal fleet of dragon riders and side-mounted artillery cannons. While some of the ships were clearly built for war, with graceful keel lines and intricate construction, others seemed more of a last-minute afterthought, with crudely cut holes for cannons to be mounted marring the ships’ hulls. Below him, he watched as the Zero gracefully weaved its’ way through the airships, its’ light machine guns and twenty-millimeter cannons carving a path of destruction through the enemy dragon riders. “They may have a lot of scales on their body, but that doesn’t do much to save them from high-explosive autocannon rounds,” he grimly remarked, watching as dragons fell from the sky, their wings torn to shreds by the fragmenting rounds. One particular round caught the rider dead-on, ripping a massive hole in his chest in a spectacular spray of blood that caused Tails to wince.

“Hey, are you gonna go do something, or is there some other sight you wanted to see first?” Ring asked in Tails’ mind.

“Oh, yeah, I forgot I left you in here,” Tails replied, looking over his shoulder to the floor of the seat behind him where he’d left the sentient scimitar the night before. “Yeah, just trying to think of the best way to dispose of these things.”

“Well, burning them like you did earlier would work.”

Tails shook his head. “They can just put the fires out using magic. We need something bigger…”

Suddenly, the sky rapidly grew dark. Looking up, Tails could see the twin moons slowly beginning to align with the sun, their pale blue and pink colors blending with the pure light of the sun to form an awe-inspiring, colorful celestial alignment. The airships below let out massive billows of gunsmoke, utilizing the sudden darkness to shell their torch-lit ground targets with impunity.

“Dang, a double solar eclipse?” Tails remarked. “That’s not gonna last long, if Saito’s trying to get home. One of the moons will move out of alignment faster than the other.”

“Bigger problems, partner,” Ring replied. “The airships are opening fire. They waited for the ground forces to light up torches so they could concentrate fire on the largest groups.”

An idea began to formulate in Tails’ mind. “Bingo, that’s the plan!” he said. Letting go of the throttle, he quickly flicked through the several display options for the main screen in front of him, settling on a display that offered data pertaining to the turbines’ output levels. Punching in a sequence of commands via a keyboard under the screen, a bright green message scrolled across the top of the display.

“Armor mode engaged?” Ring asked, watching through Tails’ eyes as the bar graph of turbine outputs began to shift. “What’s that?”

“You’ll see. Do me a favor and throw up a shield around the plane, just in case.”

Suddenly, the two main turbines cut power, slowly folding forward as the afterburner turbine took over as the jet’s main thrust source. Tails struggled to keep the aircraft airborne as the massive twin turbines transformed into fist-like protective shields in front of the cockpit, throwing all aerodynamics of the sleek airframe out the window in favor of raw protective power. “Ramming speed!,” he said, impersonating his favorite sci-fi starship captain with a giddy anticipatioin in his voice as he lined up the now forward-heavy craft with its’ first victim.

“Oh holy fuck!” Ring blurted as Tails gunned the throttle, diving straight toward the closest airship. The fox’s runes on his hand lit up as the scimitar hastily threw a blue energy shield around the Tornado moments before impact. With a brief, mild jolt that threw Tails against his seatbelt, the tarred wood of the deck gave way as the jet crashed into the ship, slicing through the wooden hull like a hot knife through butter. Tails pulled back hard on the control stick as the Tornado burst through the bottom of the ship, narrowly avoiding plowing into the ground below. Skimming over the grass, he could see hundreds of horse-mounted knights charging along the crater-marked grassy fields, each bearing the symbol of Tristain’s castle on their polearm-mounted flags and armor that glimmered in the light of their torches. Waving as the jet zipped by overhead, he pulled the craft up into a loop, switching the Tornado back into fighter mode to get a good view of the destruction. With a soundless crack, the damaged airship snapped in half, dropping out of the dark sky like a lifeless bird and smashing into the ground with immense force, spraying shattered lumber every which direction.

"Partner, I don't know if that was insanity or genius, but I gotta say, it was one heck of a light show,” Ring commented, notably exhausted. “I don’t think I’ve got it in me to keep your shield up for another one of those, though.”

"Yeah, that whiplash really sucks. But when the world needs saving, a sore neck isn't much to pay, right?" Tails joked, rubbing his sore neck. “At least we know the spine that runs along the bottom of the ship is a good weak spot. I was actually hoping to hit the magazine stores for those cannons and detonate the ship, but this is a little better, I think.”

"Tails, come in! I need help!" Saito called over the radio.

"What is it?! You hit? Out of ammo?"

"It's Wardes! He's on a dragon, and it's freaky fast! Tabitha and Kirche picked up Louise and brought her to me, but I can’t maneuver too much while she’s standing up, trying to cast some spell. Wardes is really-" the boy said, suddenly cutting out.

"Roger, on my way. I have visuals," Tails replied, catching sight of the green plane zipping by not a hundred meters away. Pulling the Tornado into a tight turn, he rushed to the scene, quickly pulling up on Wardes' six. “Saito, you need to pull up or something. These laser cannons are going to overpenetrate like crazy, and I can’t risk hitting you!”

"I told you, I can’t! Louise is completely absorbed in this spell, and is gonna fly out if I maneuver at all!" the boy replied.

"Then tell her to sit down and get out of here! The solar eclipse is gonna be over real soon, so you need to get out of here. I can take him,” the Mobian said, his finger anxiously caressing the trigger on the control stick. Noticing the Tornado behind him, Wardes opened fire with a wild mix of spells, bouncing spell after spell off of the jet’s durable space-capable plating. It wasn’t long until Wardes caught on, turning to fire on the Zero in front of him instead.

“Shit, he got one of the fuel lines!” Saito reported, “Hurry up and do something, damn it!”

Tails looked over his shoulder to the scimitar. "Ring, it's your turn. Remember that thing we did where you moved a shield really fast?" Tails asked. "I need you to make a pointed shield and stab his dragon. Make sure it goes down – run it through all the way. You gotta make sure to stop it before you hit Saito, though."

"On it. Give me a sec," Ring said. The inscriptions on his blade began to glow, harnessing the power of Tails’ familiar runes. In front of the X Tornado, a large arrow-shaped shield burst into life, waiting for the command. “Alright, hold me steady so I don’t overshoot.”

Over the radio, Saito called for Tails’ attention. "Tails, get clear! Louise’s spell is almost done prepping. This one’s gonna be big!"

"Roger. Do it, Ring!" Tails ordered.

The blue energy arrow blinked out of existence, re-appearing in front of Wardes’ mount. Moments later, the dragon exploded into a cloud of blood and bone, launching its’ rider forward through the air. Tails didn’t dare stick around to see Wardes fall as he pulled away and gunned the engines, the jet’s acceleration plastering him to to the seat as he blasted through the sound barrier.

Suddenly, a bright blue flash lit up the darkened sky, followed by an incredible pressure wave of air that shoved the jet forward, nearly sending it into a lethal tumble. The Tornado shot out of the blast wave like a bullet, streaking into the distance at ludicrous speeds. When the explosion died down, Tails pulled a wide U-turn and flew back to observe the damage.

“What the hell,” Tails muttered to himself, taking in the carnage before him. As the solar eclipse came to a close, the sun revealed the remaining aircraft, each a blazing inferno falling out of the air like a fiery comet. Amidst the orange-lit blaze, he could make out Saito’s Zero gliding around in the air, its’ engine sputtering as it drained the last of its’ fuel. Tails trailed Saito in the air until he was able to put the Zero down on a no-power landing in a field, rolling to a stop in a grassy field not too far from the chaos. Switching over to Walker mode for an easy landing, Tails touched down a short ways away and hopped out to greet the two. Louise and Saito were arguing about something already, coming as no surprise to the fox.

"I told you to go back! You were fired! And now look what you did. The dragon is ruined, so you'll never be able to go back," Louise stated, furious. Her demeanor was softening, though, as a few tears began to form in her eyes.

"Hey, I couldn't exactly leave you, right?" Saito retorted.

"Idiot!" she yelled, then followed up with a kiss. Saito was temporarily surprised, but accepted it and held it for a while as Tails looked on, a sly grin on his face.

“How long do you think it'll last?” Ring asked in Tails’ mind.

“What, the kiss? Ages, if modern media has taught me anything. Their relationship? Who knows? I personally find Louise a little too abusive when she gets mad, but hey, maybe that's Saito's thing. I'm gonna go check on the others.” Tails hopped back up into his X Tornado and stomped off to the battlefield, carefully watching for signs of enemy soldiers who might have survived. It didn't take long for him to find Princess Henrietta’ encampment, where a swarm of soldiers ran out to greet him.

"Are you the one who punched through that skyship in blue and yellow light?" A soldier asked, ecstatic.

"Yeah, that was me,” Tails casually replied. “Hey, do you know if a couple Academy students came back here? Short with blue hair and a staff or a girl with red hair?"

A bit of mumbling from the soldiers. One soldier stepped forward. "No, sorry. We're too busy dealing with our own wounded as it is."

Tails shook his head. "No, they aren't wounded. At least I hope they aren't. Did any of you see where a blue dragon landed?"

"Yeah, over there in the woods a couple hundred meters. By that burning ship," another soldier yelled over the crowd, pointing toward one of the burning wrecks with his pike. Thanking the man, Tails turned his Tornado around and stomped off in the direction of the wreck, eyes peeled for anything suspicious. "Ring, you feel anyone there?" he asked.

"Wait for it… Yeah, I got a reading on them. Someone's holding them prisoner, their thoughts are racing. Guiche is there, too, but he doesn't seem to be panicking."

"How far?"

"About fifty meters ahead."

Tails pushed the mech forward, storming through the treels toward the wreck with the Tornado’s guns at the ready. He came out of the woods into the clearing, where he could see Kirche and Tabitha kneeling down before a purple light, its’ wielder obscured by a bush. He trained his guns on the light and hit a button on the side of his headset, connecting to a loudspeaker on the outside of the jet. "You with the purple light, get on the ground, or I carve you up!"

* * *

 

The man behind the purple light hesitated. Should he give up? This beast destroyed his fleet, after all. He trained the light of the Ring of Andvari on the beast, hoping to use its’ mind-control powers to seize it for himself.

"You have to the count of three to drop the light. Three…"

Why wasn't it working? The man thought. Surely it's-

"…Two…"

Sensing impending death, he ran forward and whipped out a sharp boot knife, holding it to the blue-haired girl's throat. Surely it wouldn't kill him if one of its precious girls were on the line? He stood the blue-haired girl up and held a knife to her with one hand, and the ring toward the Tornado.

"…one. Alright, you asked for it."

Suddenly, Guiche burst out of the trees with a large stick in hand. He ran up with a short war cry and cracked it over the man’s head, snapping the weak twig in half. Wrestling with the man for a moment, the man was able to turn and put the short knife in Guiche's arm. Tails seized the opportunity to pop the canopy and dash for the man as the two wrestled, using his tails to sweep the assailant’s legs out from under him before stomping on his head, knocking him out cold. As the man slipped into unconsciousness, the purple light emanating from his ring faded, releasing his control on Kirche and Tabitha. Tabitha quickly darted over to the man, removing the ring from his finger and slipping it onto her own.

"What a jerk. Using magic items to control us like that," Kirche said. "Thanks again, Tails!" she added, giving Tails a deep hug.

"Hey, wait a sec,” Tails said, prying himself free of the girl’s embrace. “We need to tend to Guiche, right? He got stabbed.” He ran back to the Tornado and popped open the storage hatch where his toolbox would’ve been, fetching a small red medical kit from deep inside the compartment. Making a show of things, Guiche removed his arm from his shirt to assist in the medical procedure as Tails ripped open a sterilized gauze package, wrapping it around the wound and adding a few drops of a disinfectant tincture. Guiche cringed in pain from the disinfectant on the wound.

"Chill out, Guiche,” Tails said, tying off the gauze. “At least it's not going to get infected with this. Besides, you get to show all the women your cool battle wound, right?"

"Oh, you're right! And for saving damsels in distress, too! I'm sure that will win Montmorency over."

"Well… I did have the guy at gunpoint, and he was sticking his head out like an idiot, so… well, screw it. Tell the story however you need to. Not much I can do to change your attitude, right?"

When Tails finished up the bandage, he loaded everyone into the X Tornado and stomped off to the camp. Saito, Louise, and professor Colbert were already there to greet them when they arrived. "Great job, Miles!” Colbert announced, relieved. “I was getting worried for a moment. Sylphid already came back from inspecting the wreckage and was wondering where Tabitha and Kirche were. The princess wants to see you six, as soon as possible."

The group walked through the camp, trailing after Colbert as they weaved through the tents and masses of meandering soldiers. Arriving at a well-guarded tent, they found princess Henrietta seated at a long table with her advisors, dressed in an ornate, lavender-colored ceremonial battle outfit in place of her usual snow-white dress, her coronation mace secured to her hip. Seeing Louise, she flew out of her chair and rushed over, nearly tackling her with a bear-hug. "Oh, Louise! I'm so glad you're safe!” She exclaimed, stepping back to address the others. “We couldn't have won this without you all. Really, not even our deepest thanks could begin to sum up the results of your efforts."

"Princess, I'm just glad you’re safe,” Louise replied, a rare happy smile on her face. “We just did what was asked of us.”

"And you shall be recognized for your bravery. This evening, I will hold the honors ceremony for everyone who fought today. I expect all of you to be there."

"Of course. We'll be glad to attend,” Colbert added, gesturing toward the tent’s entrance. “We will leave you to rest, as I am sure you are busy with the clean-up process.”

With nothing else to be said, Tails slipped out of the tent and disappeared into the crowd of soldiers, work his way back to the Tornado where he’d left it. Everyone dispersed to help out with various duties for the day, helping the injured. Clambering up into the pilot’s seat, he booted up the electronics and started a self-diagnostics software, watching the screen like a hawk as the computer spat out readings in real time. Suspicious of the computer's green "All clear" message, he hopped out and opened service panels one by one around the body of the craft to give everything a manual inspection. After an hour of searching the entire interior down to the last wire and servo motor, he was shocked to find that everything was just as immaculate as he’d left it the night before. He let out a low whistle and stepped back, admiring the golden craft in the afternoon light. “Great job with that shield, Ring! Not a scratch in the paint. The electronics aren't even jarred around. Just how much force can those shields take?” he asked.

“I dunno. I suppose its’ just as strong as I am, when I’m using it for you, but lets’ not find out the hard way.”

Tails shrugged. “Fair enough.”

Turning back to the camp, he could see tents slowly falling as people began packing the forward base into wagons. Saito and the others emerged from the horde of busy soldiers, clearly exhausted.

"Even with magic, that was a lot of work!" Kirche complained.

"Yeah, no kidding," Saito added. "Hey, Tails! Where have you been?"

"Checking on my Tornado here," Tails said, yawning. "Totally fine, even after punching through that ship. Thanks to Ring, of course."

"Have you checked on my Zero? Can it be fixed?"

Tails shook his head. "I haven't checked, but it probably can be. Unless it blew up while I wasn't watching, it's fixable."

"Cool. Anyways, the Princess already headed back to the castle. We need to head over there pretty soon for the ceremony an all.”

“Correction, we should get going NOW, so that we don’t keep her Highness waiting,” Louise added, rolling her eyes.

“Okay. The Tornado can fit three others. Is Sylphid good to go?” Tails asked, looking to Tabitha. The blue-haired girl only nodded, letting out a sharp whistle with her fingers to summon the familiar blue dragon from the woods some hundred yards away. Helping Kirche and Guiche up into the Tornado, he nodded to Saito and Louise. “We’ll see you guys at the castle!” he called as the canopy slowly closed around him, the whine of the heavy turbines spooling up once more.

* * *

 

Streaking through the air, The X Tornado made short work of the quick jaunt to the castle, touching down in Walker mode just inside the perimeter fence separating the city streets and castle grounds. Grabbing Ring and dismounting from the jet, Tails quickly merged into the stream of noblemen and women entering the castle, losing sight of Kirche and Guiche amidst the taller adults. It didn’t take long for the crowd to slowly lead him into a large banquet room, where hundreds of others had already taken a seat, waiting for the event to start.

Standing among the incoming stampede of guests, Tails felt a tap on his shoulder from behind. Behind him, Siesta stood in her normal maid’s outfit from the Academy with a smile on her face. “Oh, hey Siesta! Great to see you,” he said. “How’d you end up here? I thought you were at home with your grandma in Talb?”

“Oh, an army recruiter came around asking for volunteers,” she replied, looking slightly embarrassed for some reason. “All the maids and butlers at the Academy are given some basic medical training, so I volunteered to help with the wounded. Come on, Her Majesty saved you a special seat up front!”

Tails followed Siesta up to the front row of seats at the front of the hall, hardly ten meters from princess Henrietta in her throne chair on a raised pedestal. He gave her a short wave, eliciting a smile from the purple-haired princess that caused Siesta to bow out of habit. “How can you be so casual with the princess?” she asked in awe once Henrietta looked away.

“I dunno. She’s just a friend, I guess,” Tails replied with a shrug. “It’s great to respect the title and all, but at the end of the day, she’s the same as you and Saito.”

Siesta giggled under her breath, giving the seated fox another heartwarming smile. “Alright, well I need to get back to work at the door. Bye, Tails!”

As Siesta retreated through the crowd, Ring popped out of his sheath a ways. “Aren’t you the sweet-talker!” he said.

Tails glanced down at his sword, confused. “What do you mean by that?”

“It’s not every day someone compares you to a princess.”

“Oh… I didn’t mean it like that,” he replied, rubbing the back of his head in embarrassment.

“The way you phrased it, it’s not exactly hard to connect the dots.”

“Whatever,” Tails said with a sigh, not willing to chase Ring down his rabbit hole of a conversation. “Just how I always saw things, growing up with princess Sally as more of an older sister than a ruler and all.”

Within a few minutes, Kirche and Guiche found their way to their seats at the front of the room, followed by Saito, Tabitha, and Kirche moments later as the last of the guests filtered into the remaining seats. As the last of the nobles took their seats, Henrietta stood from her throne and began.

"Today, we welcome into these halls five heroes that fought alongside our brave men on the fields of combat against the Reconquista-headed armies of Albion!" she started. "Kirche Augusta Frederica von Anhalt-Zerbst of Germania! Louise Le Blanc de La Vallière of Tristain! Guiche de Gramont of Tristain! Saito Hiraga! Miles Amadeus Prower! Charlotte Helene Orléans de Gallia! Please step forward."

As the six rose from their seats and moved to the front of the room, Henrietta waved over a man carrying what appeared to be a large jewelry box. "Today, as Princess of Tristain, I bestow upon you six the medal of the Heroes of Tristain, as thanks from the nation for your service." She opened the lid and removed six medals from the box, presenting them to Tails and the others by placing them around their necks. The room erupted into applause once more as the Princess finished with awarding the medals. The princess silenced the crowd once more. "Now, I ask of all of you to take a moment of silence, in respect of those who fell today." The room fell silent as everyone bowed their heads, offering up their quiet prayers and condolences for the families of the lost.

After a minute of silence, Henrietta raised her head. "Thank you for your time devoted to these men," she said, gesturing for Tails and the others to take a seat. The six returned to their chairs as the princess received a rolled piece of parchment, slowly listing off the names of the fallen. "We respect their sacrifice for this country, but I personally believe that the best way to honor them is to celebrate their success on the field,” she concluded, rolling up the parchment once more. “Festivities shall be held throughout town, followed by an honorary ball this evening. Please, make yourself at home throughout the city today."

Tails hopped up from his seat as the rest of the nobles began to rise, happy to get out of the packed room. Following Saito and the others out of the room, the group barely made it through the door before chaos began to unfold. Siesta caught up with Saito and eagerly congratulated him on his success, giving him a quick hug. Louise was quick to respond, giving the boy a solid five-star across the back that nearly knocked him over.

"Hey, it's not my fault she wants to see the medal!" Saito argued.

"I don't want to see you anywhere near her like that!" Louise retorted. "Be glad I'm showing restraint in not blowing you up, as I don't want to scare anyone."

Siesta opened her mouth to chime in, but Kirche cut her off. "Where should we go? We have time to kill before the ball tonight, I suppose," she asked.

As the group came to a stop, Tails kept on walking down the hall. "I'm headed into town for a while, then out to work a bit on the Zero,” he said. “You guys can come if you want, but I'm going, so I’ll see you guys tonight."


	34. Season 1 Chapter 34

CHAPTER 34:

Strolling through the crowded city streets, Tails stopped to admire all the food stands, shops, crafts, and other festivities. "Man, I wish Cosmo could see this. She would have love this!" he said to himself absentmindedly. Feeling someone tapping on his elbow from behind, he turned to find a small congregation of children behind him, armed to the teeth with play swords, slingshots, and paper hats laden with crude drawings. "Excuse me, Mister Fox! Were you one of the flying warriors?" a little brown-haired boy asked.

"Yeah, I was," Tails replied, crouching down to their eye level. The children oohed and ahhed, their eyes lit up wth excitement. Within seconds, he found himself under a deluge of questions from the curious kids, their energetic inquisition drawing the attention of passing adults who stopped to get a look at one of the heroes of the day.

"Is it true you can fly on your own?"

"Can we see you fly?"

"Can we also see your flying thing you rode?"

"Calm down, guys," Tails said, motioning with his hands to quiet down. "Yeah, I can fly, and yes, you can see my Tornado. If you want, we can probably even go for a short ride if you get permission from your parents," he added with a grin. Nothing made him happier than being able to show off his technology, especially his X Tornado, his pride and joy. Droves of adult onlookers gathered around him as Tails gently pushed the children back to give himself some space to take off. With a quick spool-up of his tails, he took to the air, hovering a few feet over the street.

Laughing, the kids darted underneath him, basking in the downdraft of his tails. Seeing one kid raise his hands, Tails reached down and grabbed the boy’s outstretched arms, taking him for a short lift down the street. “Hey mom, look at me!” The boy yelled, waving his legs as Tails carried him down the street, the other children chasing him as he went. Merchants and shoppers alike watched in awe as he drifted to a stop, clearing a space to set the boy down and land.

"That's soooo cool! How do you do it?" the young boy asked.

Looking around, Tails pointed to a small pidgeon sitting on the edge of a nearby rooftop. "Here's a hint, study the shape of birds’ wings. Who knows, if you work hard and study a lot when you grow up, you'll build the first flying machine without magic!”

"Yeah, alright! Can we see your flying thing now?"

"Sure. Go tell your friends and get your parents’ permission while I go grab it. I’ll be over by the main gate to the castle grounds," Tails replied. Grinning from ear to ear, the boy ran off to his group of friends to share the good news as Tails turned back down the street. He took to the air with his tails, gently rising above the crowded streets to the rooftops above. With no one to slow him down, he found himself pulling up to the castle gates hardly half an hour later.

Inside, he found the Tornado surrounded by gawking nobles. Peasants lined the street against the fence, equally snared by the machine’s futuristic allure if not its’ golden appearance. Hopping up into the Tornado immediately scared away the nobles, afraid of being caught in the downdraft of the powerful turbines as they booted up. Sizing up the main gate, he shook his head and sighed. “No way she’s gonna fit through there in Walker mode,” he thought, his hands resting on the jet’s controls, “so we’ll have to go over.”

With the turbines sufficiently spooled up, Tails pushed the throttle slider to half power, watching carefully as the jet rose into the air in a vertical takeoff. Nudging the control stick forward pushed the craft forward over the stone wall, sending the onlooking citizens scrambling for cover from the turbines’ dangerous blast as he lowered the throttle, bringing the craft to the ground once more. Tails winced as loud crack reverberated through the craft, the mortar-bound cobblestone street giving way under the sudden blast of hot air and intense stress. “Guess their roads aren’t ready for thirteen-ton mechas just yet,” he joked to himself. “I really hope they don’t bill me for that, though…”

Switching off the turbines, he popped open the canopy and climbed on top of the airframe, taking a seat on the craft’s nose. People looked on with awe at the mysterious "beast", secretly talking amongst themselves as they went about their day at the nearby shops. Minutes later, Tails could see the group of kids with their parents in tow, gleefully hacking away at each other with their wooden swords as they walked.

"There it is!" one of the kids called. The group of kids ran up to meet Tails as he hopped down from the Tornado to greet them.

"Alright, you guys gotta promise me one thing when I put you up in there. Don't touch anything I don't tell you to. It's a dangerous vehicle and weapons platform," Tails instructed. "Promise?"

"Yeah!" the kids said, nodding vigorously.

"Alright, one at a time. Here we go!" Tails said, picking his first viewer. He grabbed a young black-haired boy and flew him up to the cockpit, where he sat him down in the seat. "This is where I sit when I fly. I use this stick to control how I turn, like this," he pointed out, grabbing the control stick and moving it about a bit. The black-haired boy watched with pure excitement as the aeilerons on the x-formation wings responded, flapping up and down. "These triggers here control the frontal lasers. Buttons here control the Power Ring launcher, and these switches here toggle IR flares and chaff, respectively."

"How fast can this thing go?" the boy asked, kneeling in the chair to get a better view over the control panel.

"Faster than the speed of sound. That means if I were flying over town, you would see me in one place but the sound would look like it's coming from somewhere behind me,” Tails said, pointing to the distant city limit. “If I were flying straight at you, you wouldn't hear me coming, because I would reach you faster than my sound would."

The boy's eyes bulged wide. "Really? That's fast. How do you keep control of this thing when you’re going that fast?"

"Good senses, and lots of practice. I spent a lot of time flying slower planes before I decided to do this one, so I had lots of practice. You probably won't ever go that fast in your lifetime, so it's not something too troubling for you, I suppose."

"Do you think I could become a dragon or griffon rider? Momma doesn't think so, since they are hard to take care of…" the boy asked, a little crestfallen.

Tails smiled and gave him a thumbs-up. "Hey, if you truly love it, go for it! Being in the sky is the most freeing thing. Something like that should never keep you down, if you work hard enough for it."

Reassured, the boy looked up and gave the fox a quick hug. "Yeah, you’re right. Hey, thanks a lot, mister! I won't forget this!" he exclaimed.

“No problem! Let’s let your friends have a look now,” Tails said, helping the young boy out of the seat and back to the ground. For the next hour or so, he cycled all of the kids through the pilots’ seat, giving them similar explanations and running them through the controls. One by one, the childrens’ parents thanked him profusely for entertaining them before hustling off to enjoy the festivities, their children gleefully detailing their experience as they walked.

As the last child disappeared into the crowds with their parents, Tails let out a short sigh of exhaustion and hopped up into the pilot’s seat, ready to leave. “Man, kids are exhausting,” he thought to himself as the Tornado’s turbines spooled up, their whine filling his ears as he slipped on his headset. Sliding up the throttle, the craft took to the air, nearly knocking over street-side shopping stands with its’ powerful thrust as it went. People watched in awe as the Tornado rose into the air high above the city, its’ roar grabbing the attention of the entire city as it switched to fighter mode, shooting forward like a bullet toward the horizon.

* * *

 

The X Tornado touched down in walker mode, the exhaust end of the heavy turbines pressing into the grassy field like feet into sand. “Man, it’s beautiful out here today!” The fox thought to himself as he hopped up from his seat, standing on the edge of the craft’s nose as he leaned against the open canopy to stretch out. He hopped down from the jet and circled around to its’ right side, withdrawing his toolbox from its’ hatch underneath the pilots’ seat.

Behind him, Saito’s Zero sat on the grassy field where he’d landed it. A faint yet distinct scent of gasoline tainted the gentle breeze that swept over the plane, reminding Tails of the many afternoons he spent with his close friend and fellow inventor, Chuck Thorndyke, bent over the engine of the Thorndykes’ car back on Earth. “I really miss that crazy old man,” he thought as he set down his toolbox next to the airplane’s engine, kneeling down beside it to take off Ring’s sheath and retrieve his HUD device. When the gadget’s glass-cased hologram screen blinked into life, he tapped through a few menus and pointed the device toward the plane, side-stepping along the plane’s length as the device scanned the aircraft piece by piece. Within seconds, a fresh schematic of the craft was assembled, overlayed with the old one created when he had first found it. Orange and yellow markers dotted the combined schematic, denoting how severe the computer predicted the damage to be. Thankfully, nothing was red, to indicate damage beyond repair.

"This shouldn't be too hard of a repair job, I suppose," Tails thought aloud as he lowered the screen and circled around the craft, kneeling by one of the landing gear wheels. "A rock punctured a landing tire, so I'll need a new inner tube for that. I'll also need some metal tubing to replace the punctured fuel line, and some bar stock to trim down and replace the damaged section of the rudder control rod. I'll also need to rebuild some ammunition, and get some duralumin sheets and paint to repair the holes in the fuselage.” Standing up, he gently ran his hand over one of the small holes that pockmarked the craft, a result of Wardes’ spells. He walked over to the left wing and pulled up his T-Buster, using the device’s plasma cutter function to cut away the damaged aluminum alloy surface where his HUD indicated damage to the fuel lines. Reaching into his toolbox, he pulled out a couple of wine-corks he’d nicked from the Academy kitchen the night before and cut them down to size with a razor, forming two well-fitting plugs for the damaged line. "There, that’ll do for now. It may not make an airtight seal, but at least it will keep dust and things from getting in there. That'd be a pain to clean out without the tools I need," he remarked, tossing the razor back into the box.

"Hey, partner," Ring said, slipping out of his sheath next to the toolbox. "You gonna go to the ball tonight?"

Tails moved to the plane’s tail, inspecting the damage to the rudder. "I sorta have to, right?” he idly replied. “We're the guests of honor, with that medal I left in my seat and all. It'd be extremely rude not to come."

"You know that'll entail a lot of work from you, right? Speeches, lots of greeting, dancing, drinking, maybe a few officiated gambling or drinking games even."

"Speeches aren't my favorite, but I can handle myself if need be.” He rolled his eyes, letting out a short sigh. “You're right about the rest of it though, I hate that stuff. Greeting people is probably the least of it. I've never been able to hold down any remotely hard alcohol, so drinking and drinking games are a no-go. I can barely tolerate a single beer, as I found out when I tested a few for making chili. According to my friends who were with me, I basically passed out on the spot, nearly knocking a whole pot of chili off the stove as I fell. It’s sorta like what happens when you mix me and chocolate. Terrible stuff for us vulpines. Can kill us, sorta like canines I suppose.”

"Well, not all nobles are hard drinkers, so hopefully you'll be able to stick around them," Ring suggested. "Everyone will probably expect a toast or two, so you might need to find something non-alcoholic or just take a sip out of respect instead of chugging a glass per toast."

"Yeah, well that still doesn't solve the dancing problem. People are gonna want to dance with the heroes, and even if I’m a familiar, that might include me. Not only do I not know anything about ballroom dancing, I’m barely four foot nine, so almost everyone except Tabitha is taller than me. I suppose it makes sense, since they're human and older than me, so they grow at different speeds…"

"How old are you?"

Tails shrugged. "About fifteen years old, give or take. I never really kept track in all the time I spent fighting, so I just like to estimate based on what I remember. I guess it just never struck me as odd that we didn’t stop to celebrate once in a while."

"Want me to teach you how to dance? You probably should learn a little bit, if you don't want to embarrass yourself tonight."

"And how do you plan to do that? If you could, I’m all ears.”

"Well, I can read minds, so I can instruct you, right? Sitting around for a thousand years just watching people is pretty boring if you aren't doing something useful, so I've learned a fair bit from just watching people. Here, let me show you."

Tails set down his tools and stepped away from the plane. A blue shield enveloped him, strangely locking him in place, as if it were no longer under his control. "Just relax your muscles and let me do the movements. I'll show you first, then you can practice on your own," Ring said. With a deep, relaxing breath, Tails let his arms and legs go slack as Ring manipulated the shield, pushing him around like a ragdoll imitating a dancing couple. He did his best to closely observe and feel all of the movements, memorizing the steps and arm movements.

After a few minutes of sliding and dancing around the field by himself, the shield dissipated, dropping Tails to his feet. "See?" Ring asked. "Not so hard. You just have to remember the basic movements back and forth, with a few patterns thrown in if that's what people around you do. Here, I'll make a body for myself. I'll play the girl's part, you play the guy's part. If you are doing something wrong, you'll feel me push you a bit."

With a brief blue flash of light, Ring re-activated Tails’ shield, this time shaping it into a humanoid form a few feet in front of him. "So first, you bow when she curtseys, and then take her hand. A good move would include even kissing her hand, since she's nobility and you're not, but only if she indicates that that's what she wants. You'll know."

"Right," Tails agreed, giving a deep bow. He stepped forward and took the girl's outstretched left hand, wondering what do with his right. “Now what?”

"Place it between the small of her back and her hip on your right side. Not too low, or it's considered a sexual approach. Too high makes maneuvering awkward during dancing."

Tails placed his right hand on the girl figure's back-left side, feeling the warm pulsing energy of the shield through his gloves. A tune popped into Tails head as Ring began to hum in a clear, rich, and deep voice, free of the metallic clanking of his physical form. The song started slow, giving Tails time to pick up the rhythm with the blue figure as he recalled the motions Ring had shown him as best as he could. Despite feeling the girl’s right hand on his shoulder pushing on him a few times, he slowly got the hang of the movements, able to move in time with the shield figure rather well. As the piece began to pick up pace, the feminine figure suddenly changed patterns, just about knocking Tails over as the hand on his shoulder pushed with an iron grip. He stumbled backward over the shield’s rock-hard feet, using his tails to regain his balance and carry on in the normal pattern. “Ow… watch it with the grip, Ring! Gonna break my shoulder before I even get there,” Tails complained.

"Sorry, bro, should have given you some indication. I’m trying to do this while watching through your eyes, so everything’s totally reversed for me. By the way, the male usually leads those kinds of special moves, but since you don't know any commands, the woman will lead in this situation. You'll need to let them know that, obviously."

Tails nodded. “Right, what next?”

* * *

 

For the better part of the day, Tails practiced his dancing by the Zero with the blue shield figure until his arms were asleep from being held up for so long. His shoulder was bruised and battered from the girl's forceful hand, and his feet started to ache from standing around for so long.

“Alright, I think you’re good to go,” Ring said in Tails’ head. The humanoid shield stepped back, releasing Tails from its’ intense grip before blinking out of existence once more.

Tails checked his wristcomm for the time, although he already knew it was late. "Crap, we should probably get back to the castle. The ball might have already started, for all we know," he said. He ran back to the Zero and hastily re-packed his tools, not bothering to be particularly organized. Latching the toolbox back into its’ cubby in the X Tornado’s frame, he sealed the compartment and scrambled up into the pilot’s seat, booting up the craft. He hung the medal that Henrietta had given him back around his neck as his automatic seatbelt harness closed around his chest, pulling him back against the seat as the two turbines spooled to life. Sliding the thruster throttle to full, the craft leaped into the air, throwing itself forward toward the castle as it rotated the turbines down into fighter mode. Within minutes, Tails found himself circling the castle, gliding to a stop to vertically land the craft just inside the perimeter gate once more.

Tails hopped down from the jet as the turbines slowed to a stop, rushing to catch up with the last few partygoers making their way into the castle. Working his way through the castle, he followed the other guests through the halls back to the ballroom where they had first convened earlier that day. Inside, well-dressed guests swarmed the tables on either side of the room loaded down with hors ‘d ouvres of all kinds, as well as a variety of wines, champagnes and beers. Music emenated from the front of the room somewhere, but Tails couldn’t quite catch a glimpse of the musicians through the crowd. He worked his way through the forest of nobles, and tray-bearing servants to the snacks table, finding a small pocket of space to himself. Snatching one of the small plates from a stack, he gathered a selection of the table's samplings before retreating to a bench built into one of the large windows on the left wall of the hall. “Beautiful little garden,” he thought to himself as he looked out of the window over the well-manicured hedges and flowerbeds beyond a short stone railing. He bit into a prosciutto-wrapped date and turned around, glancing across the crowd in hopes of catching sight of his friends.

As he finished up his appetizers, a bell chimed from somewhere near the front of the room, causing the center of the room to clear with practiced haste. A selection of the crowd of nobles stepped into the clearing, forming up with their partners in a circular pattern with plenty of space in the middle. Standing on the bench, Tails could see princess Henrietta stand up from her throne, looking around the room. "May the awarded heroes of the realm please step forward for the first dance?" she announced.

Saito, Louise, Kirche, and Guiche stepped forward from various points throughout the crowd, eyes already met. Guiche and Saito each stood in silence in front of their partners, so exquisitely dressed. Tails set his plate down and made his way through the crowd out into the center of the dance area, eyes down so as to not make eye contact with anyone he didn't intend to. He had noticed that even Saito and Guiche had changed into nicer dress clothes, most likely courtesy of the Princess. "Shit, now I probably look like an idiot for showing up casual," he muttered under his breath. The music started to play, setting the dancers into motion as Tails stood awkwardly.

"Sorry, Tails. Looks like you got stood up," Guiche remarked with a wry smile on his face, a little too loud. The crowd began muttering in the background, nobles looking amongst themselves to see who would offer to dance with the short Mobian.

"Yeah, well, it's better than dancing with your ugly mug, Guiche. I feel sorry for Kirche, there," Tails retorted. The crowd broke into laughter, but fell silent as the door at the back of the hall opened. A gap parted in the crowd and dancers, revealing Tabitha in a stunning shoulderless ice-blue ball gown, accompanied by snow-white gloves that ran almost up to her shoulder as well as her usual red-rimmed glasses. It had never struck him just how composed she seemed; despite her diminutive, child-like figure, she undeniably commanded the attention of the adults around her as she glided out onto the dance floor, fearless if not devoid of emotion. Tails’ lips slipped into a grin as Saito and Guiche focused on their own dates, afraid of what they might do to them if they react. Tabitha entered the circle of dancers and stopped before Tails, giving him a short curtsey and holding out her hand. Tails bowed and took her hand, briefly kissing it before taking her hand and stepping forward.

"I'm not very up-to-date on fashion, but I'd hazard to say you look fantastic," Tails remarked as he placed his right hand on the small of her back. "I've only learned the basics of ballroom dancing from Ring in the past few hours, so you'll have to show me what you want to do. Sorry."

Tabitha nodded and took position, waiting for a downbeat in the music to begin. In an instant, the two took off around the circle with basic steps, following a circular pattern that Guiche and Saito were following as the music picked up…

* * *

 

Tails absorbed every minute of the hours that followed, dancing into the night with the rest of the guests. "I wonder if this is what it would have been like with Cosmo…" Tails thought, his eyes locked on Tabitha’s caribbean-blue eyes. “They do look like hers,” he added in thought.

Suddenly, the music ended, interrupting Tails’ train of thought as the two finished their last steps of the dance. Tails looked around and imitated the male dancers around him as he stepped back and gave Tabitha another bow. Seeing a chance to take a break, he stepped out of the dancing ring as other dancers took the stage, heading for a door to the garden outside.

"The stars are beautiful tonight, Ring. Can you see them?" Tails asked, leaning up against the carved stone railing.

"Yeah," Ring replied. "I’ve gotta say, dancing with Tabitha looked like fun."

Tails nodded. "It was. Probably the most fun I've had since I've been here, to be honest. Almost everything else has been ‘go here, bust these guys a new one, go home’. Working on the Zero’s been fun, but I can do that at home."

"Do you like her?"

"Hey, butt out!" Tails thought, looking around to ensure he was alone in his thoughts. "…I do like her as a friend. I like them all. It's going to be hard, leaving them behind if I ever get back to Mobius."

"You know that's not what I meant, and you know it."

"Shut up… I like Tabitha as a friend. I still have Cosmo to think about, you know that."

"That's not what your mind was saying during the dance, nor your heart if I had to guess."

"Shut up, before I melt you down and throw you away,” Tails thought, blushing under his facial fur. “I’ve told you my answer, so just… forget about it."

Ring fell silent, sliding back into his sheath at Tails’ hip. Tails felt a light tap on his shoulder, catching his attention. He turned to find Tabitha standing behind him, her silhouette outlined by the magic candlelight of the ballroom behind her. Without warning, she stepped forward and embraced him, catching the fox by surprise. Tails attempted to return the hug, but Tabitha pulled away and caught him in a kiss. His eyes widened in surprise, but he decided to roll with it. After what seemed like ages, Tabitha broke loose.

"Well, THAT was technically a first. What's with you, Tabitha?" Tails asked, as politely as possible.

"As thanks for the dance," Tabitha said, her soft voice filling his ears. She stepped beside him, standing with him against the railing as he turned back to observing the stars.

“What's with her, Ring?” Tails thought, glancing over to the blue-haired girl. “Is she drunk or something? That was totally unlike her.”

“I dunno,” Ring replied in the Mobian’s head. “Her mind's empty as can be. She isn't even thinking of anything dramatic like her parents. Perhaps she had a moment of clarity.”

“Beats me.”

“Just ask her. She'll respond truthfully, I'd bet. She's showing interest, intentionally or not.”

“Listen, Ring, you know damn well I’m not giving up on Cosmo,” Tails thought bitterly. “Yes, I like Tabitha, but not like that. I’m growing Cosmo’s seed she left me and getting her back. End of story.”

“Now YOU listen, Miles Prower,” Ring commanded, filling the fox’s head with a deep, threatening voice. “You, too, know damn well that that seed isn’t her. I’ve seen your dreams, your nightmares, your distant thoughts. Maybe you don’t realize just how connected we are, but you and I? I’ve seen nearly every thought to go through your nerdy head since I arrived. I’m not you, but sometimes I think I know you better than you do.” Ring sighed, his tone returning to normal. “She’s gone. There’s nothing you can do to change that. Move on.”

“You’re wrong!” Tails thought aloud, slamming his fist into the stone railing. He leaned down against the stone, resting his face in his hands as a few tears escaped the corners of his eyes, rolling down his face. “You’re fucking wrong!” He silently mumbled.

Amidst his silent crying, his large furry ears twitched as he felt Tabitha’s hand come to rest on his shoulder. Wiping his eyes with the back of his gloved hand, he looked up at her, locking eyes with her once more. “God, they ARE her eyes,” he thought.

“The best thing you can do for Cosmo is remember her and move on,” Ring said in Tails’ mind. “You wouldn’t want to be dead and have her in grief over you all of her life, would you?”

Gently nodding, Tails wiped his eyes one final time and gave Tabitha a deep hug, holding her tightly. Deep down, he knew Ring was right, as much as he hated it. He knew he would never come to forgive himself for that day he killed her, but despite hearing everything Ring had said before, something about seeing those eyes in front of him one more time drilled it home. “Thanks,” he whispered. “Beautiful night tonight, huh?”


	35. Season 2 Chapter 1

SEASON 2 CHAPTER 1

The X-Tornado whizzed through the air, leaving a vapor trail behind its powerful turbines as it flew along. Under Tails’ control, the craft sailed through the hovering islands of Green Hill Zone with expert precision, the thrill of narrowly dodging the oddly shaped land masses filling his heart. As he entered a straight, narrow clearing, he stole a glance to his left, watching as his blue blur of a friend bounced from one land mass to the next alongside him, a hyperactive pinball keeping up with the jet with ease. Signalling his intentions with his hand, Tails swerved the jet to the left, breaking out of the enchanting terrain to clearer skies over an ocean-like lake. A small vibration rocked the craft as Sonic leaped up onto the Tornado, taking up his favorite position upon one of the x-shaped formation of wings behind the cockpit. Despite his friend's presence, though, he was unable to feel anything but a sense of dread as he flew, like something was eerily wrong.

Suddenly, a dark blob on the distant horizon formed, slowly spreading and growing closer until it engulfed most of his view in front of the jet. As the mass spread, individual flecks of fluttering blackness became visible; millions of bat-like creatures coated in glistening, tough scales held their position, waiting for something. Black Hawks, Tails knew them to be. “And they only work for one guy,” Tails thought grimly, his hands tightening on the controls.

A loud knocking sound rang out over the gentle whine of the turbines, snapping Tails out of his thoughts as the Tornado barreled forward toward the enemy.  Glancing over his shoulder, he did a quick double-take in fearful surprise as Sonic was nowhere in sight; instead, a new, black-and-red hedgehog Tails knew as Shadow stood in his place with a furious scowl across his face. Kneeling down, Shadow readied his right fist, punching through the canopy glass over the passenger seat behind him. Tails pulled hard to the right on the control stick, putting the craft into a hard aileron roll that caused Shadow to lose his grip, tossing him toward the deep blue water far below.

Righting the craft, Tails let out a yelp as he jammed the stick forward, sending the craft plummeting downward as a torrent of blue bolts of arcing energy narrowly whizzed by overhead. "Like a goddamn danmaku game, isn't it!" he thought aloud, dodging and weaving the Tornado through the hailstorm of energy-bolt fire from the Black Hawks. "Ring, you gonna give me a shield?... Oh, right, I left Ring with Tabitha to keep her company. Alright, we do this the hard way."

Pushing the throttle all the way, Tails urged the craft forward, indiscriminately sweeping the cloud of enemies with the jet’s heavy laser cannons. A few bolts of return-fire from the Hawks scored the gold-titanium plating, leaving burn marks but no permanent damage or energy overload that the craft couldn’t dissipate. Tails punched the afterburner as he closed the gap between himself and the crowd of Black Hawks, guns blazing as he carved a path through the swarm. In what seemed like an instant of obscuring darkness, the jet smashed through the ranks of flying beasts, coming out on the other side. In front of him stood a heavily armed alien battleship, menacing and dangerous. What caught Tails’ eye, though were the two entities standing on the bow of the ship, waiting for him; Dark Oak and Black Doom. Tails’ teeth clenched tight at the sight of his two most hated enemies, a low instinctual growl filling his chest.

Suddenly, the lights of the control panel in front of him flickered, then blacked out with a synthesized voice warning him about low energy reserves. Having programmed the warning himself, he knew what it meant – it was also something he never hoped he’d hear in his life.

"Damn, one shot at this, I suppose," Tails thought. He shut down the turbines and lined up the craft, letting the guns use up the last of the reserve power to charge for a final shot. As the Black Hawks behind him turned to engage the incapacitated jet, Tails lined up the cannons with the last of the jet’s momentum and let loose their final defiant burst. The bolts found their mark, staggering Dark Oak as they pierced through his heavy armor, but it wasn’t enough to kill him.

Regaining his footing, the monstrosity let out a vile laugh and shook its head. "Tails, you never did learn a thing from our previous encounter! It's so refreshing to see someone so intelligent stoop so low into stupidity," Dark Oak called.

As the Tornado finally slowed below glide speed, the army of Black Hawks opened fire from behind. Blue electrical arcs bathed the Tornado in light, shorting every electronic onboard from sheer volume. Tails gave a final scream of pain as the energy coursed through his seat and into his body, seizing control of his body with hundreds of thousands of volts of energy that shook him with violent spasms. He slipped into unconsciousness as the dead ship fell, shaking, twitching, shaking…

* * *

 

Tails bolted upright, almost slamming his head into Tabitha's. His forehead was bathed in cold sweat or water, he wasn't sure. It wasn't for a solid ten seconds of running his hands over his entire body to check he still existed that he realized the shaking was a sensory input to his dream, that Tabitha was shaking him awake.

"Nightmare," Tabitha said in her usual quiet voice.

Looking around, Tails saw that she was kneeling next to him in her nightgown, her staff on her lap and a small bucket of clean washcloths submerged in water beside her. A dim light began to stream through the curtains of the room’s only window, indicating that it was some time near morning. "Yeah… sorry if I woke you up,” he said, rubbing his eyes. “Thanks a lot.”

Tabitha nodded and stood up, walking over to her dresser. A loud knocking erupted from the door, splitting the relative silence of the room and snatching Tails’ attention. Averting his eyes, he waited until Tabitha was fully dressed before answering the door, fidning Kirche and Louise waiting in the hall. Louise had Saito by the ear, her shorter stature forcing him to bend down if he didn’t want to have it nearly ripped off in her iron grip. For some inexplicable reason that baffled the fox, he also seemed to be covered in ash and wearing an incredibly gaudy-looking pair of purple, gem-riddled lensless glasses that looked like the mad concoction of some kindergarten art project. “I’m not even gonna ask,” he thought has he stepped back into the room, slipping on his shoes.

"Hurry up, or we'll be late for the parade!” Louise exclaimed as the fox slowly collected his few belongings. “The Princess' coronation ceremony is today, we can't miss it!"

Tails cinched down Ring’s sheath to his hip and let out a short yawn. “Right, I’m ready I guess.”

Louise and Kirche turned toward the stairs, nearly racing each other down the dormitory tower to the field below with Saito in tow. "Hurry up!” Louise called up the stairs to Tails and Tabitha as they casually trailed behind, both buried in a new novel Tabitha carried. “The school never orders enough carriages for everyone to group together if people take one by themselves, so we need to be quick!”

"Wait a second, couldn't we just take the Tornado and Sylphid? Wouldn't that be faster and easier?" Tails called back, finally catching up with the two girls as they waited at the bottom of the tower. Louise was about to open her mouth to respond, but was cut off by a loud chirping sound that echoed back up and down the tower’s stone-walled structure. The gems embedded in Saito’s glasses began to blink brightly.

"…Saaaitooooo! Who was it this time?!" Louise growled, drawing her wand as she traced the imaginary line from the boy’s face to where he’d been staring moments before – in this instance, what part of Kirche’s cleavage that was exposed through the top of her white blouse she never quite buttoned up all the way.

Derflinger popped out of his scabbard on Saito’s back. “Hey, you can’t blame the kid for having good tastes!”

Sensing imminent combustion, Tails slowly backed away toward the stairs as Louise angrily jerked the boy by the ear, pulling him out into the grassy lawn beside the dorm tower. A muted *whumph* resounded as orange light bathed the doorway, followed by the gentle waft of smoke and ash filling the air. Tails and Kirche poked their heads out of the doorway, finding Saito plastered to the ground, covered in dust kicked up from the violent compression wave of Louise’s explosion. Louise proceeded to scold the boy in plain sight of nearly every student in the Academy as they congregated by the main gate for their ride to town.

“You should really stop tempting him when Louise is around,” Tails remarked, observing the human-shaped outline of unburnt grass beneath Saito as the furious pink-haired demon lifted him to his feet.

“Hey, I can’t help looking good!” Kirche laughed.

“Looking sexy doesn’t do you a damn thing if you get us all killed,” Ring added, voicing the Mobian’s thoughts, albeit with a bit more colorful word choice. “Well, everyone except me, anyway. I’ll still be here laughing my ass off.”

"Good to know you’re just as much the disembodied asshole I pictured you to be, Ring,” Tails replied.

"Carriage…" Tabitha stated, stepping outside. Ignoring Louise and Saito, she walked off toward the main gate, followed by Tails and Kirche. Weaving through the massive crowd of students surging to find a carriage, they came to a stop at the same white-washed carriage that had carried them to Tabitha’s mansion previously. “Oh yeah, I forgot you have your own ride!” Kirche remarked. “That saves us a lot of trouble. Thanks!”

By the time Louise was done thrashing Saito, most of the students had boarded their carriages together and left. Tails boarded the carriage after the two girls, folding his tails around him into his lap and taking a seat between them. Moments later, Louise shoved Saito into the carriage and stepped in behind him, taking a seat on the opposite bench.

Tabitha gave the wall of the carriage a short tap with her staff, signalling the driver that everyone was on board. As the carriage lurched forward, Kirche took a moment to get comfortable, causing Saito's glasses to burst into action once more. On cue, Louise drew her wand from the waistband of her skirt, but Tabitha was faster on the draw and snatched the wand out of her hand without even looking up from her book. She gave Louise a scolding shake of her head and handed back her wand.

"You're lucky we're in this carriage for now, but it's still coming to you later," Louise huffed, placing her wand back in its band. Saito nervously faced the window, hoping to avoid any more conflict with such a temptation sitting across from him.

* * *

 

The hours seemed to melt into one another as the world slowly passed by the carriage window, until finally the castle and its surrounding city came into view. Rolling into town, Tails could see the city streets packed with its citizens, celebrating once more like they had only a few days ago.

"Wow, you would think they would’ve run out of liquor after the celebration last week,” Saito remarked. “I wish we partied this hard back home.”

Kirche raised an eyebrow in curiosity. "You mean people don't celebrate the coronation of a new leader in your world?"

"Nah, not really,” Saito said, shaking his head. “Our government has a prime minister that is elected by the people, once every four years. Sometimes we get a new leader, sometimes the same man is re-elected over and over because he's good at keeping support from the majority. It's just something that comes and goes, I suppose."

"Whatever," Louise interrupted. "Let's get out here and walk. There's going to be no place for the driver to tie up if we go any farther." She opened the door to the carriage and stepped out into the crowd, followed by the others as the carriage came to a stop.

Tails waited as Tabitha gave her family driver instructions to pick them up later before catching up with Louise and the others, who had gone ahead to find a good spot to view the upcoming parade. After a bit of walking, Louise finally picked a spot where everyone could have a good view of the street, patiently waiting amongst the crowd. Over the calls of vendors hawking their delicious-smelling edible wares, a loud roar of cheers could be heard down the street from citizens near where the soon-to-be Queen Henrietta’s parade was, slowly growing closer as it made its way through the streets. Eventually, the carriage rounded a street corner a block or so away and came into view, bringing the surrounding citizens to an uproar of applause and cheers.

As the carriage passed where the five stood, Tails looked up at princess Henrietta and gave her a smile and a wave, receiving an enthusiastic reply as she passed. Her focus quickly shifted to Saito, giggling at his ugly glasses no doubt. He looked over to Saito, finding him dumbstruck as he and the Henrietta made eye contact, if but for a few seconds. Moments later, a familiar chirp rose into the air, followed by an audible growl from behind.

With an earsplitting bang, all hell broke loose.


	36. Season 2 Chapter 2

SEASON 2 CHAPTER 2:

Smoke rose into the air as people scattered in all directions in an attempt to find shelter from the unknown assailant. Princess Henrietta’s guard gathered around the Princess to ensure her safety, drawing cavalry swords and a variety of ranged weapons including crossbows, flintlock pistols, and throwing daggers.

As the smoke passed, the guards quickly identified the source of the explosion, or so they thought, and closed around the suspect – an unconscious and heavily charred Saito, spread out on the ground from the concussive blow. In a frenzy of machine-like efficiency, they dismounted and quickly captured Saito, detaining him and rushing after Henrietta’s speeding carriage.

Louise stood in shock, her jaw dropped as Saito disappeared around the corner. “You’ve gotta be kidding me!” she growled, recovering from her shock as she gripped at her hair in frustration.

"Well," Kirche managed through a fit of laughter. "Looks like we'll be spending the afternoon bailing him out of jail now, I suppose."

"It's not funny!" Louise roared, stamping her foot. "He was staring at the princess, which is absolutely unacceptable. Even more so than staring at you!"

"Chill out, Louise. It's his nature. Not much we can do for now, except go talk to Queen Henrietta and explain. Otherwise, Saito will be treated as an attempted murderer and tried for treason. That's the death penalty, for sure."

"Yeah, I don’t think you want him dead just yet," Tails added.

The four began to make their way among the streets, mostly deserted as people slowly began to re-emerge from hiding. Tails could see many heads peeking out of windows in shops and homes, retreating when he made eye contact with any one face. “I wonder if that calls off the events for the day,” he thought, his stomach grumbling. “I really wanted to see if we could get some good food at the stalls since we missed breakfast ages ago…”

Working their way through the city, Tails and the others arrived at the main gates to the castle grounds. The heavy wrought-iron gates were sealed shut, staffed by a couple of burly, halbert-wielding guards in heavy armor. One of the two guards also had a short square of fabric mounted over his armor, decorated with several colorful badges.

“We need to see queen Henrietta!” Louise declared, fearlessly stepping up to the armed guards.

"No one enters or leaves until we ensure the queen is safe," the badgeless guard replied. “Once we have the situation under control, then we can permit you to visit her, if she approves of it.”

“No, we need to speak with the queen now! The one you have wasn't to blame, it was my accident that caused the explosion,” Louise pleaded. Suddenly, she stopped to correct herself, rolling her eyes at whatever thought passed through her brain. “Well… actually, it wasn’t an accident, and he deserved it, but… whatever, I know queen Henrietta personally, so we need to speak with her so Saito won't be tried.”

"You know the boy that was captured?" the guard with the badges asked.

Louise nodded, sighing. “Yes, that idiot is my familiar. If you’re the guard captain,” she said, nodding to the man’s set of awards on his chest, “then we need to speak to the Queen as soon as possible, before anyone jumps to conclusions and kills him."

"Very well. George, accompany our guests," the guard captain said, turning to his companion. The other knight turned to open the gate, escorting the four into the castle’s depths.

Climbing the sets of stairs to the throne room, they found the room mostly unoccupied. Only a few of the queen’s guard remained in the room, including a few of the female knights that had hauled Saito away.

"Excuse me," Louise asked one of the female cavalrymen. "Where is Queen Henrietta?"

"She's downstairs in the dungeon, meeting with the prisoner we took,” she replied. “If George accompanies you, you are welcome to meet her. You four are the students decorated in the war a week and a half ago, correct?"

"We are," Kirche stated, pride starting to creep into her voice. "Thanks for your assistance. George, do you mind?"

"Not at all, Miss. Right this way," George replied. He opened the throne room door and led the way back down the stairs, winding through the seemingly endless corridors of the castle. Finally, the group made it down to the subterranean dungeons where Saito was supposedly being held amongst the few other prisoners. Down the torch-lit corridor, another female cavalrywoman stood in front of the door, flintlock handgun drawn and low at the ready.

"Four here to see the Queen,” George said, giving his fellow knight a brief salute. “Four of the five decorated students from the war to see her, specifically."  
The cavalrywoman nodded and gave a short knock on the door. "One moment more, Agnès," came a reply through the heavy steel door, who Tails recognized to be Henrietta. The group waited for a few moments more, before Ring decided to break the silence.

"Oh man, Saito, you crazy, desperate man," Ring said, letting out a laugh. It took a moment before Louise put two and two together, spurring her into action. The cavalrywoman Henrietta called Agnès quickly cleared the path of the pink-haired ball of rage, who threw the door open with uncanny strength. Tails braced for impact as Louise entered the cell with her wand at the ready, thoroughly expecting a massive shockwave of air to roll down the hall, sweeping everyone away; for once, however, this wasn't the case. He took a few steps forward and peeked into the cell to see Louise kneeling in front of a surprised Saito, giving him a hug. The Queen sat on her knees next to Saito, watching Louise’s unusually warm embrace with a note of disappointment, almost sadness, in her eyes.

"George," Queen Henrietta stated, bringing the knight to attention. "Tell the guards to stand down. This morning was an accident. Agnès and I will escort our guests."  
"Very well, your Majesty," George stated, giving her a quick salute before hiking back down the hall. The sound of his armor clattering as he ran echoed through the stone halls, until the sound of the dungeon door slamming shut brought on the eerie silence of the cells.

"I'm sorry about what happened this afternoon, your Majesty," Louise stated. "It was entirely my fault, an attempt at punishing Saito for his incorrigible behavior gone wrong."

Henrietta stood up and dusted off her dress. "Louise, just because I've become queen doesn't mean I want you to treat me any differently than before," she said, taking Louise’s hand. "None of this queen buisness. We're friends, remember? Also, think nothing of this morning, I completely understand. Although I don't think Saito's as 'incorrigible' as you may think," she added with a short giggle.

"Thank you, Henrietta. We should head back to the Academy. I'm sure afternoon classes will be starting soon," Louise stated, giving Henrietta a final hug. Saito got to his feet and dusted himself off, slowly edging his way to the door. Louise suddenly locked on to Saito, giving him a potent death glare. "Don't think you've escaped punishment for what you did. When we get back to the Academy, you’re really in for it."

Saito nodded miserably, embarrassed at being called out in front of the queen. Henrietta released Louise, obviously blushing at the remark but secretly smiling at the backhanded compliment. Exiting the cell, the group walked in awkward silence as they made their way through the dungeon and back up to the main gate of the castle grounds.

"I hope you have a safe journey back," Henrietta said. "Please come back and visit any time!"

"We will! Thanks again for keeping Saito safe,” Kirche replied.

When the group got out of earshot of the Queen, Louise shot Kirche a dirty look. "What does Saito mean to you? He's my familiar."

"Doesn't mean he's not worth being around. You should know that," Kirche said, giving Louise a shrug and a sly smile.

"What does that mean?" Louise asked, starting to get mad again.

"It means exactly what it means, word for word. Figure it out, Louise," Kirche stated, her temper rising a bit.

Tails butted in, physically pushing himself between the two girls. "Hey, let's not get angry at each other before we get stuck together in the carriage,” he said.

As the two girls continued to bicker, Tabitha silently took lead of the group, heading off in the direction where she had instructed the driver to wait in advance. Approaching the carriage where it waited at the street’s edge, the carriage driver snapped out of his nap and hopped down from his bench to hold the door for his guests. When everyone was boarded and seated, he closed the door and hopped up onto his bench, giving the reins a short snap to spur the twin horses on home toward the Academy.


	37. Season 2 Chapter 3

SEASON 2 CHAPTER 3:

Tails laid down on his bed, ready for a good night's sleep. The day had passed in relative normalcy, mostly working on the Zero replacing body panels, engine tuning, polishing, and painting the new panels, with a little bit of practicing new swordplay skills with Saito and more reading practice with Tabitha. To top it all off, he built a small, simple collapsible cot made of wood and canvas for when Louise had required him to sleep in her room. “All in all, a successful day, I’d say,” he thought.

Saito finally entered the room after finishing a late dinner and bath, flopping down on Louise’s bed – a privlege she recently decided he had earned for not leaving for home during the eclipse. "Thank god for beds and sleep," Saito said. "I don't think anything could ever feel as comfortable as a hot bath and a warm bed. You know what I'm saying, Tails?"

"Yeah,” Tails said, nodding in agreement. “Hey, just curious, what did you do to the Queen while you were in that cell? Ring was laughing as he read your thoughts for a moment."

Saito sat up in bed, shaking his hands. "Nothing! Tell Ring to keep to himself from now on! He's going to get me in more trouble than I'll be able to stay alive through!"

The door slammed inwards, yielding a furious Louise who had just overheard their conversation. "Ring, do you care to tell me exactly what Saito was thinking at the time he was in the cell with Her Majesty?" she asked, a disapproving frown on her face.

"Sure!” Ring said, eager to cause some mischief as he slid out of his sheath to speak. “Se was thinking about asking if he could touc-" Ring began. Tails rapidly slammed him back in his sheath, blocking his speech. “Not now, Ring. If she gets mad, we'll never get any sleep. You know that,” the fox thought.

“You making that an order to shut up?” Ring thought back.

“Make it a combo, don't tell her telepathically, either. Large fries and a drink while you’re at it.”

Louise stomped over and pulled Tails out of bed, shaking him by the shoulders. "Don't you keep the truth from me or I'll beat you both!" she yelled, glancing over to Saito. She grabbed at Ring and drew him from Tails' sheath, giving him a shake. "Tell me!"

"Sorry, under orders from Tails not to tell. He's also asking for some food, while you're taking instructions," Ring stated in a deadpan voice.

Furious, Louise threw Ring against the wall by Tails' cot and rushed to her drawer, reaching for her riding crop. She immediately lunged for Saito, screaming as she swung her weapon. "You dogs! Conspiring together, thinking of the Queen like that!"

Saito leapt off the bed, narrowly dodging a blow to the head. "Hey, let's all go to bed and forget about it! It's passed, and Henrietta said its okay!"

“IT’S NOT OKAY!” Louise barked, catching him square across the face with the sturdy riding crop. He tumbled back across the room, slamming into Tails and knocking them both over. Tails was the first to recover, sliding out from underneath Saito and scuttling back by Louise's bed to retrieve a pillow to defend himself with. As Louise laid into Saito with her crop, Tails saw his chance and quickly got into bed, making himself as inconspicuous as possible.

"I figured it'd end this way," Derflinger said, sliding out of his own sheath.

"No kidding,” Ring added. “If there were ever a couple that loved each other by fighting, this is them."

"I wouldn't call it love, Ring," Tails said, his voice drowned out by Saito and Louise's one-sided verbal and physical sparring. "More like physical abuse. Only one person is being aggressive here. Anyways, I'm gonna try to get to bed before Louise is through with Saito. Maybe she won’t wake me up." Silently yawning, he clasped the pillow he "confiscated" from Louise's bed over his head to drown out the noise, slowly slipping into sleep.

* * *

 

*KERBLAM*

The door slammed open, startling Tails out of his uneventful sleep. His eyes focused to the morning light streaming through the window, staring at Louise sitting on top of a beaten, topless Saito. Tails could see Agnès' head in the doorway, a look comprised of surprise, confusion, and slight fear across her face.

"Uhhh… I'll come back another time…" Agnès said, slowly withdrawing from the room. She shut the door but didn't let the handle go, confused as to what to do. Moments later, she slammed the door back open again, having overcome her confusion. "Sorry, but this can't wait. Her Majesty the Queen's been kidnapped!"

"WHAAAT?" Saito and Louise stated in unison.

"Yeah. Get cleaned up, then meet me downstairs by the gate. We need you in the air with your dragon to help get her back, as soon as possible." Agnès shut the door and ran down the dorm hall, footsteps fading into background noise of waking students.

Louise removed herself from Saito's chest and began changing into fresh, undamaged clothes while Saito donned his white t-shirt and blue hoodie. Tails rolled out of bed, tossing his pillow back onto Louise's bed. “Jeez, were you two fighting all night or something?” He asked, looking back and forth between the two as he secured Ring’s sheath to his hip.

“Yeah,” Saito nodded, yawning from the lack of sleep. “Looks like you missed out on the fun…”

“Shut up,” Louise snapped. “I’m just as tired as you and it’s your own fault.”

When Saito and Louise were fully dressed, Tails slipped on his shoes and gloves and took off down the hall to the stairs. The peach-haired twenty-year-old lady was waiting patiently by the perimeter gate on her horse, checking over the edge of her saber as she waited for the others to jog over.

"From now on, we will refer to you three as callsign 'Zero', as is the reported name of the dragon,” she said as Tails and the others approached. “We need you airborne and headed to Lake Lagdorian, as that is the last heading my squad gave me before I came here. See you there." With that, Agnès stowed her blade and tapped her mount’s sides with her heels, taking off down the dirt road away from the Academy at a breakneck gallop.

Saito turned to Tails. "Did you finish the repairs on the Zero yet?”

"Yeah, for the most part. She's airworthy, as far as I can tell."

"Good. Louise and I will fly in the Zero then. You can fly your own X Tornado. Louise knows the way, so you can just follow us."

Tails nodded. “Right. Let’s get airborne.”

* * *

 

Saito and Louise jogged over to where the Zero was resting outside the perimeter wall, the faint, acrid scent of freshly dried paint hanging around the craft in the still morning air. Helping Louise up into the craft, Saito climbed up onto the wing and took a seat, with Louise sitting sideways on his lap.

“I had Professor Colbert help me clean and refill the fuel tanks when I fixed the fuel line,” Tails said, waiting by the plane’s propeller. “Ready?”

Flipping a switch to open up the fuel lines, Saito gave the fox a thumbs-up. His hand gripped tightly around the control stick as Tails gave the propeller a good spin, the radial engine sputtering to life once more. Pushing the throttle lever forward turned the sputter into a roar, the rush of air over the fuselage howling in his ears until he reached behind him to shut the canopy. The craft lurched forward, slowly picking up speed as it rolled over the grassy field. A sense of excitement began to build in Saito’s chest as the craft began to take to the air after each bump, struggling to get to the air.

Intently focused on the horizon, a sudden jolt of the craft gave Saito a brief scare as the plane took to the air. Glancing up at Louise, he noticed her gaze transfixed on the left wing of the craft; to his surprise, Tails was crouched on the wing, resting his right hand on canopy’s glass top. How he was able to stand against the ferocious wind rushing past the craft was beyond him.

"He really is something else," Louise remarked. "I'm surprised he isn't dead by now, pulling stunts like that."

"Yeah, really. Good thing he's on our side, though. Hell, it's a good thing YOU'RE on our side," Saito replied.

"I suppose…" Louise said, blushing at the compliment.

* * *

 

The three flew in silence for a ways, constantly on the lookout for either the kidnapper or the queen’s squad of cavalry giving chase as they headed for the lake. The sunny skies above slowly gave way to dark clouds with a light, bone-chilling misty rain that spattered against the windscreen.

“Can’t we go any faster? This is super cramped,” Louise said, shuffling around on Saito’s lap. “My back’s killing me.”

"Yeah, we can, but I don't want to knock Tails off out there,” he replied, looking over to the fox. “Also, with him on the wing, it's unstable as it is. Going faster would be even harder to control.”

Suddenly, a loud series of pops rang out from the engine. Thin black smoke began to waft out of the engine compartment from every crevice, spurring Saito to pitch the craft down to drop altitude in a moment of panic.

Tails noticed the smoke and worked his way over to the engine compartment. Saito watched as he casually popped open the service hatch, letting the wind clear out a large volume of black smoke. After a moment's inspection, Tails signaled to Saito to kill the engine, which Saito did gladly.

The fox shut the service panel and worked his way back to the cockpit, sliding open the glass canopy to give Saito the news. "Multiple ruptured gaskets,” he said. “They must’ve been pretty worn out, but my HUD didn’t pick up on them. Besides getting awful compression and wasting precious oil, the engine would eventually seize, which is more repair work than I care for. Just set her down somewhere."

"Hey, look!" Louise called, pointing over the right side of the silently gliding plane. Saito put the plane into a slight bank in order to get a better view, catching sight of a horse and its rider at full tilt.

"That's got to be them. And hey, there's the lake!" Saito said, straining to be heard over the rushing wind. He pointed the craft toward the glistening water and began maneuvering around the lake, looking to land near the edge. He brought the landing gear down and maneuvered for the lake's edge, but the Queen's captor, had other plans, stopping his horse right in the plane’s path. Saito pulled back up and retracted the landing gear, deciding to take the next best approach. He didn't have enough momentum to get back around the lake for another attempt, so he cut it short and landed on the surface of the water belly-first. With the soft rush of water filling the still air, the craft glided across the water, coming to a stop as the belly of the craft ran up against the bottom of the lake’s pebble-filled edge with a soft crunch.

"Smooth as silk, Saito. You sure this is only your second time flying?" Tails remarked.

The Japanese boy held up his left hand, showing off his glowing runes on the back of his hand."Gandalfr powers, remember?"

"Oh, right. That's cheating," the fox replied with a laugh. Shutting down his rocket shoes, he walked the length of the wing and leaped to shore, his shoes sinking ever so slightly into the soft, wet grass.

Tails killed his rocket shoes' reverse thrust and hopped off the wing of the plane onto solid ground. A few feet ahead of him stood a familiar-looking blond-haired man in a blue jacket, his arm wrapped around queen Henrietta’s shoulder as he held her tight to his side.

Finally, the thought clicked in Tails’ mind. "Prince Wales? Is that you?" Tails asked, in shock. "I thought you were dead! How…"

Wales shrugged and gave the fox a short grin. "Well, here I am, aren't I? Now if you don't mind, step aside from the water. We have a promise, a marriage, and a life to fulfil," he said with confidence. Behind him, the horse he had ridden whinnied nervously.

Saito and Louise scrambled to their feet, leaping to the grass. "Henrietta! That man's a fake! I saw Wales die with my own two eyes!" he said, pointing at the blond-haired man.

"No! It cannot be!" Henrietta cried, trembling with emotion at the accusation. "See? He has the other royal ring, the Ruby of Wind! No one but the true Prince could have such a ring." She held up his hand with hers, revealing the matching set of rings they shared. Each stone gave off a faint glow, purple and blue.

Out of the corner of his eye, Tails watched as an icicle the size of his head streaked through the air, exploding into icy dust only a foot from Wales’ head as he intercepted it with a spell from his own short, black wand. Not daring to look away from the potential imposter, Tails glanced over to see Tabitha and Kirche dismount from Sylphid.

"Give it up, your majesty. He's a fake, being controlled by magic," Kirche called. "We did our research. Well, Tabitha did, on the way here. It’s the Ring of Andvari."

Glaring at the two girls, Wales raised his wand and let loose a wordless spell. With an deafening roar, a concussive blast of air erupted from his wand, throwing the two girls to the ground with incredible force. The world went silent for a moment as the ringing sensation in Tails’ ears subsided, the gentle hiss of rain falling into the still lake like snakes constricting around his stomach in fear.

“No!” Tails yelped, turning to sprint to his fallen friends, but was stopped by Wales as he turned his wand to the fox. "Do not touch them,” Wales ordered, scowling fiercely. “I only gave them what they intended to do to me."

"Henrietta! Can't you see what he just did?!" Saito called. "He hurt your friends! The real Wales wouldn't have done that!"

Wales now turned to Henrietta at his side, a sickening smile on his face. "Come, my Queen. Let us show them true magic so I may prove myself," Wales said into Henrietta's ear, holding her trembling hands as he helped her raise her ceremonial mace against Saito, Louise, and Tails. With a silent chant the two nobles shared, a frigid swirling gust of wind filled the air. Like a geyser, a vortex of rainwater sprung out of the ground, clawing to the sky high above as it approached its victims.

Overhearing some muffled conversation, Saito drew Derflinger and leaped forward, sword held in front of him. His blade seemed to halt the tornado’s path, but only with immense effort from Saito as he dug his feet into the soft dirt. "Hey, I need some help here!" Saito called.

Tails only stood in shock, looking over at Tabitha and Kirche in their fallen state. Time crawled to a standstill, the world’s colors now muted and lackluster as he watched -- he knew what was about to happen, and yet didn’t know what to make of it. Two voices took over his mind, neither one of them Ring or his own; one urged him to accept something, the other to reject it. It was the voices of the Chaos Emeralds, voices he’d heard before, but he couldn’t quite put it in words as to where.

“Are they dead?” he thought, watching Tabitha and Kirche with total disconnect, perhaps from the sudden shock. One voice told him yes, the other, “maybe”. Both led to the same response in Tails’ mind. Together, the voices urged him to act, and fast.

Tails’ perception of time snapped back to reality, but he felt different. Looking down at his hands, he found his body coursing with a dark energy that seemed to fill him with anger, with power. "You wanna play, you sonovabitch?" he muttered, looking up at the tornado that Saito struggled to resist. Glancing back at Louise, he watched as she recoiled in surprise at his near instantaneous change, shocked by his new appearance.

“I’ve got this,” he said, receiving a quick, frightened nod from the girl. He turned back to Saito and strode past him, stepping into the spell. Speeding clods of dirt ripped from the ground by the tornado harmlessly bounced off of him as he walked, stepping out on the other side. Henrietta could only watch in horror as Tails ripped the mace from her hand, flipping it around and planting its bulky metal head deep in Wales’ stomach as the tornado dissipated. As the man buckled in half from the blow, Tails removed the bloodied mace and raised it high, ready to snap him in half with a blow to the spine, but Henrietta cried out and threw herself at Tails, staggering him and forcing him to halt his attack.

Henrietta locked eyes with the fox, speechless as she gazed into his empty eyes – his pupils and retinas had faded, leaving nothing but a white void that chilled her to the bone. She tried to speak, but no words would come out as she wept, tears streaming down her face. “Don’t,” she managed to say.

Nodding, Tails lowered the mace, handing it back to her before gently pushing her aside. He stepped over to where Wales lay, quietly coughing up blood that stained his white clothes underneath his jacket. "If you ever touch my friends again, I will put my fist through your chest and rip out your heart," Tails growled. Henrietta rushed over to the fallen man’s side, clasping his hand in hers.

Wales let out a bloody, gurgling cough before looking over to the purple-haired queen. "My Princess, my time is short. I am already dead, and must return," Wales stated, gently but matter-of-factly. "I want you to promise me something before I go."

"Anything!" Henrietta sobbed.

"Forgive me, and find someone else to love. Forget me so that you may move on, and love again."

Henrietta seemed surprised. "But what of our oath? I can't make a promise like that!" she said, shaking her head.

"You must. I want to hear those words,” Wales insisted. “Make a new oath, with the Water Spirit of Lake Lagdorian as witness."

"I can't!"

"You must."

"No! I will have you make an oath to me. Swear that you will love me for eternity!"

"I'm sorry, Henrietta. A dead man cannot make an oath of eternity."

"Please!" Henrietta pleaded.

"Henrietta. I couldn't say these words before, due to a fate I thought would happen. I love you, and always will. Goodbye."

And with that, Wales gave a final sigh and passed away.


	38. Season 2 Chapter 4

**SEASON 2 CHAPTER 4:**

Around them, the world seemed frozen save for the gentle rain that fell. Henrietta sat in shock, unable to accept that he, Prince Wales, her love, was gone. How could he be gone? He had sworn to her.

"Wales… Wales!" she screamed, sobbing over the body she held in her hands. How could this have happened? He swore to her!

Saito and Louise quietly approached the grieving queen, heads down in respect. “It was him deep inside, to the very end,” Louise mumbled, kneeling next to her friend and hugging her tight.

Still standing, Tails’ rush of hateful Chaos energy began to subside, taking with it much of his strength. Henrietta watched as he shook off the sudden weariness as best he could and rushed over to where Kirche and Tabitha lay, only just starting to come about. Sounds of the chilling rain and the rustle of wind through the trees occupied her mind as she reflected upon her first visit to the lake with Wales. Then, what Wales had said finally hit home.

"…So that you may move on, and love again."

Gently removing Wales’ special ring from his hand, she stood up, wiping her face of her tears. Tails had assisted Kirche and Tabitha to their feet, bringing the group together around her. "Thank you, everyone. You saved me from a fate I could have never expected," she began. Her entire body still shivered under the chilling, pervading rain, but she stood strong. "I was blinded by my devotion to Wales. He was a wonderful man, and seeing him alive after so much death left me willing to believe the lies the magicians who controlled him offered, despite the truths you brought before me earlier."

"No one would have guessed he was a fake outside of his erratic behavior," Saito offered. "You weren't to blame."

"Thank you," Henrietta said. In the distance, the sound of galloping horses began to grow as a new party approached. "That would be my gunpowder squadron, most likely. It’s time I return to the castle. Thank you.”

Looking down one last time at Wales’ still face, she carefully mounted his horse and waited for Agnès and the rest of her small group of soldiers to arrive.

“Hey, Henrietta! We’ll need some help getting this home!” Tails called as the queen began to leave, gesturing to the partially submerged aircraft resting at the lake’s edge.

“We’ll have it returned to the Academy as soon as possible!” Agnès called, giving the fox and his friends a short wave before disappearing through the woods with the rest of her squad.

As soon as the sound of the horses faded away, Tails turned to the aircraft and let out a sigh. "I dunno about you guys, but I see three problems here. One, the interior of the plane is getting wet, because Saito left the canopy open. Two, the plane is sitting in at least a half a foot of water, undoubtedly washing away useful oil and grease from the interior and causing water damage. Three, the plane is in no condition to fly after that landing, so we need to figure out some other way of getting home."

"I'll run close the canopy," Saito offered. Running over to the plane, he hopped down into the seat and latched the canopy shut. Holding her head in one hand and her staff in the other, she silently cast a spell about the plane to lift it out of the water, holding it aloft as Saito hopped out of the plane and lowered the landing gear by hand. Thunder boomed overhead Tails fished around at the lake’s edge to find some stones to serve as crude wheel chocks for the Zero.

"It's probably not safe to fly for any long period of time with this storm," Kirche said, flipping the hood of her soaked cloak up. "I don't fancy being fried by lightning today."

"No kidding," Tails said. "Being blasted by ionized air at 50,000 degrees over the course of a million volts at thirty-thousand-ish amperes is definitely not the way to go," Tails added with a laugh. Everyone gave the fox a nervous glance, to which he only shrugged and returned to his work.

With the Zero somewhat secured, the group headed off into the woods, following a muddy dirt road toward the nearest village. "Tabitha, can't you do something about this rain?" Kirche complained, wrapping her cloak tightly around her. Tabitha shook her head, still pressing her hand against her forehead.

"Doesn't the rain bother you, Tails?" Kirche asked.

Tails shook his head. “No, I like the rain. It’s the lightning that used to really get me… Although I have an idea. Ring, can you make a barrier around us and move it as we walk?

“Sure. Also, replace the Power Ring if you could. It would be helpful.”

Tails drew his T-Buster and removed a fresh ring, snapping it into place on the blade. A large blue bubble appeared around the group, tall enough to envelop even Sylphid as the group walked along. The shield successfully cut off the onslaught of rain and wind, giving the group a comfortable space to walk in.

"Good thinking, Tails," Kirche commented. She drew her wand and privately uttered a spell, creating a small fireball at the tip of her wand that she gently waved around, drying herself off with its heat. Everyone eagerly flocked to the flame to counter the chill of the stormy air as they walked.

* * *

 

After an hour of walking, the path finally ended at a small village at the woods’ edge. Firelight flickered in every window as people sheltered from the rain that still steadily came down, drenching everything it touched. Only the sucking noise of Sylphid lifting her massive feet from the muddy dirt road sounded over the patter and hiss of the rain.

Walking through the narrow main street of the village, Ring’s shield blinked out of existence. “I don’t want to accidentally knock down a building,” Ring explained over the girls’ sudden complaints. “It’s pretty hard to be gentle with this thing.”

“Finally, somewhere to get a ride home!" Louise cheered, pointing off at one of the buildings. Looking up, Tails noticed a sign with some words he hadn’t learned yet, as well as an iconic portrait of a stallion and a mug overflowing with foam. “Carriage drivers usually wait at pubs for their next customer, right?”

Everyone rushed over to the small sheltered porch of the pub and opened the door, peeking inside. As the others filed into the building, Tails glanced back at the blue dragon, now seated patiently on its’ haunches. “Give Sylphid a shield so she stays dry,” Tails thought to Ring, waiting for the blue shield to blink into life before stepping into the building.

Inside, Tails found the pub to be nearly empty; only a few quiet locals, who he guessed to be farmers by their appearance, were waiting out the storm with a drink or two on the bar countertop in front of them. A middle-aged lady was tending the bar, serving up one of the older customers a new pint of a dark lager.

“Come in, come in!” the lady behind the counter said, waving for the group to make themselves at home as Tails shut the door. “No sense in drowning in that torrent outside. Say, those outfits are for students at the Magic Academy! What brings you all here today?"

"We need a carriage, if possible," Kirche said, walking over to the bar. "We'd like to get back today, but it's unsafe to fly on our friend’s dragon with the storm out right now."

The lady nodded, glancing back toward the door. "Yes, certainly it is. Unfortunately, the town carriage driver, Reginald, has already been taken up for a job to northern Tristain. At best, he would be back later tonight. I'm terribly sorry for the inconvenience, but this town only has one carriage that people don't often need. You’re welcome to stay here as long as you like. Would you like me to get you anything?" she offered.

Everyone looked around at each other for a moment, deciding whether it would be appropriate to have something. "I'll have a cup of tea," Louise stated, breaking the ice.

"A mug of whatever he’s having, if you still have any left," Kirche said, nodding toward the patron to her right with the lager.

"Water," Tabitha mumbled.

"I'll have water as well," Tails said.

"Same here, please," Saito added.

Nodding, the lady set about fetching the drinks as the group made their way toward the lit fireplace at the back of the room, pulling up the two large, handcrafted leather sofas and coffee tables that looked to have seen generations of wear and repair. The sound of the crackling fire filled the quiet pub, its dancing orange light giving off a comforting aura.

"How long do you think it will take for this storm to pass?" Kirche asked, to no one in particular.

"No clue," Louise replied with a shrug. “Not like we can control the weather."

The lady came back with the drinks, setting each person's mug in front of them. Saito and Tails quickly drained half of their mugs, while the girls took time to sip theirs slowly. Tabitha set her staff on the coffee table, then leaned back against the backrest as she massaged her forehead with her hands.

"You ok, Tabitha?" Tails asked curiously.

"Headache. Tired," she mumbled. She closed her eyes and, within seconds, was seemingly fast asleep. No one dared move a muscle until they realized that she was in fact asleep, in fear of waking her up again.

"I hope it's not a concussion," Tails said, almost whispering. "She must’ve hit her head pretty hard when Wales knocked her out with that magic. I have aspirin for the headache in my first-aid kit in the Tornado, but that’s all the way back home…”

"Whatever, I'm sure it will pass with time," Kirche offered in reassurance. "She's tough as nails. Always has been for as long as I've known her."

"How long have you guys known her?" Tails asked, curious. This could be his chance to get to know her background outside of the obvious.

"She's always been quiet like this. She's a natural with magic, already a triangle class I believe," Kirche recalled. "Ice is a combination of wind and water magic, which has been her specialty since she came to the academy. Only triangles and above can combine magic like that, so she must have been a triangle at year one. If you didn’t know, mages are ranked by how many elements they master. No magic, you’re a dot; basic alchemy, a line. One mastered element is a circle, two for a triangle, and you add a line."

"Dang…" Saito remarked, letting out a low whistle. “So she’s a total pro, right?”

Louise nodded. “Yeah, it’s insane how good she is. Everyone thought she was a transfer student from another academy. When they found out she was a first-year after the placement test, well… They became jealous, to say the least. I know I did. No one really liked her. She never talked to anyone, so rumors flew like crazy.”

“Yeah, I remember during the first day I was here and I sat next to her in class,” Tails said. “Everyone dropped dead silent when she just looked at them, like they were scared or something. How old is she… and you guys? Now that I think about it, I never really thought to ask.”

"Take a guess," Louise asked.

"Alright," Tails said, clearing his throat. "Don't kill me if I get some of these wrong. Kirche, nineteen? Louise, fifteen? Tabitha, sixteen. Saito, seventeen. How'd I do?"

"Pretty bad," Kirche said, letting out a short laugh. "Tabitha's fifteen, I believe. Louise is sixteen, soon seventeen. I'm eighteen. Saito, I'd also guess about seventeen as well. We’re all second-year students, going into third year after this summer break."

"Yeah, I'm seventeen," Saito said. "You're also fifteen, right Tails?"

"Yeah. Why are you guys taking classes still if it’s summer break?”

Kirche shrugged. “It’s sorta optional. Our parents pay for tuition for the whole year and there are designated times where you’re allowed to go home, but extra classes are held during the breaks for those who don’t want to go home. Or can’t, in our case, since Henrietta seems to keep us so busy. I’d love to go back to Germania for a while.”

Tails closed his eyes as the conversations continued between Saito and the two girls. Just as he was about to fall asleep, he felt something land on his shoulder. Opening his eyes, he found Tabitha leaning up against his shoulder, sound asleep.

“She started to act up again,” Kirche said, nodding toward the resting blue-haired girl.

“What?” Louise asked.

“Nothing, don’t worry about it,” Tails said. “Long story.” He folded his tails around him onto his lap to give her more room. After a moment’s thought, he also gently removed her glasses, folding them closed and setting them on top of one of his tails. "She's just like a little kid when she's asleep, but you'd never guess it by how she acts when she's awake,” he thought, closing his eyes once more. “It’s nice.”

“I thought you didn't like her like that,” Ring said in Tails’ mind.

“Not like that. It's just… nice to see a change from that stone-cold demeanor she always carries. It's a glimpse under the mask her family butler said she put on so long ago.”

“I'd argue you're actually breaking the mask, not just looking under it. She's been sleeping much better with you around.”

“I guess. How's Sylphid doing outside?”

Ring took a moment to respond. “Doing fine, shield's still up keeping her out of the rain. Hey, from what I can see in her short term, the clouds are breaking soon. Twenty minutes is my guess.”

Suddenly, the idle conversation between the others stopped. "Tails?" Kirche said, catching the fox’s attention. "If you could, would you want to go home? Right now?"

"Huh, I dunno,” he replied, not bothering to open his eyes. “I really need to get back to my friends to show them I'm still, well… alive. They aren’t ones to jump to conclusions, but I haven't contacted them since I arrived. If you're asking me to choose between you guys and them, though, there’s no way I could make that decision. Friends are friends, and I wouldn't ever want to leave anyone behind if given the option.” He paused to collect his thoughts, thinking over the possibilities for a moment. “If I do find out how to make it home, I would want to wait here and try to find out if I could jump between worlds at will, or at least communicate with you guys here. That would require me staying here until I can confirm a connection."

"Alright, I suppose that's reasonable enough,” Kirche sighed, still somewhat unsatisfied with his answer. “Do you really think you can find something like that?"

"Probably. Every world has a natural way, as this one apparently does with solar eclipses. We just have to figure a way to replicate it artificially and in a controllable manner. Like controlled wormholes, for example."

The group fell back into silence as they finished their drinks, listening to the pattering of the rain on the pub’s roof and the crackle of the fire. It didn’t take long for Tails, eyes closed and warm from the fire, to slip into sleep.

* * *

 

Tails was gently shaken awake, snapping him out of his short nap. Saito was standing beside the sofa, gesturing to the pub’s entrance with his thumb.

“How long was I out for?” Tails asked.

“About a half hour, I’d guess. There’s a break in the storm right now that we think we can get above if we get going soon. Kirche’s already paid for the drinks she and Louise ordered.”

Nodding, Tails gently shook Tabitha’s shoulder until she woke up and explained the situation, handing her glasses back. She nodded in return and tried to stand up, only to fall back into the sofa holding her head once more.

“Crap, I think she does have a slight concussion, if that's even possible for one to be 'slight',” Tails said, helping Tabitha to her feet. "Loss of balance, headache, tiredness. Let's hurry up and get back to the Academy, where a doctor can see you." He held Tabitha up by her arm as they worked their way toward the door with Saito at his side. Outside, Kirche and Louise were waiting beside the large blue dragon, arguing over some inconceivably small topic again. The sun was peeking through the clouds above, its glare off the pools of water that had formed in the muddy, rutted road causing Tabitha to shield her eyes.

As Tabitha moved to board Sylphid, Tails grabbed her shoulder and held her back. “I don’t think that’s a good idea,” he said, looking up at the blue dragon. “The way she takes to the air so fast might make your headaches worse. I can fly much smoother, so I’ll carry you until Sylphid can get to gliding altitude when she isn’t flapping up and down so much. Sylphid, you can get back to the Academy without Tabitha, right?"

Sylphid gave a short nod and a groaning noise, eyeing Tabitha intently. "Don't worry, she'll be fine,” he replied. “If I need a break, I'll hop on. Otherwise we should be fine."

Once Saito, Louise and Kirche were on, Sylphid reared up onto her hind legs and leaped into the air, her wings spraying water from the muddy road all over the buildings across the road. With her help, Tails gently picked Tabitha up and spooled up his tails and rocket shoes, smoothly taking to the skies. It wasn’t long until he had caught up with Sylphid, who couldn’t help but look over at her master in Tails’ arms in worry. Through the break in the storm, the group slowly made their way back to the Academy, pushing Wales and the Queen out of their minds as they left the lake and town behind.


	39. Season 2 Chapter 5

**SEASON 2 CHAPTER 5**

With Sylphid at top speed, the group touched down at the Academy by lunchtime. Tails and Kirche quickly delivered Tabitha to the infirmary room, but not before he stopped by his workshop to nab his HUD device and first aid kid from the Tornado. Kirche set her friend’s staff and glasses on the bedside table as Tails laid her out, pulling up the sheets over her.

“Do you think it’s serious? I mean, I know she’ll be fine in the end…” Kirche asked. From Tails’ perspective, though, she seemed pretty worried.

“Well, I mean, any concussion is bad news,” he said, taking a seat on the edge of the bed as he fished through his first-aid kit. “I suppose a really bad one, like something you get from a car accident or something, could cause permanent damage, but that’s pretty rare. I think Tabitha will be fine.”

At the mention of her name, Tabitha began to stir in bed, immediately grabbing Kirche’s attention. “Hey, Tabitha, you awake?” she asked, her voice almost a whisper. Slowly, Tabitha sat up in bed, rubbing her eyes to try to get them to focus on the scene in front of her. Kirche handed her the red-framed glasses from the table, which she took and put on.

Finally, Tails managed to locate what he’d been looking for amongst the now-messy first aid kit; a bottle of pills labeled “aspirin”, a yellow dime-sized tablet, and a small eight-ounce plastic bottle of water, still sealed from the store he’d bought it from somewhere back home. Twisting off the plastic cap, he dropped the tablet inside and re-sealed it, giving it a quick shake before opening the medicine bottle and shaking a few off-white pills into his hand. “Put these painkillers in your mouth and wash them down with the drink, it’ll help with your headache,” he said, opening the drink back up and handing the bottle and pills to Tabitha. She took the bottle and stared at for a moment, as if to analyze what he’d done to it to turn the water yellow. “Don’t worry about the color, it’s just lemon flavoring to make it taste better,” he added hastily. “It’s normally an electrolyte powder you would add to a drink to help someone if they’re really dehydrated, but I figured it would at least make it taste better. Don’t chew the pills, or they’ll taste nasty.”

Tabitha nodded and popped the pills into her mouth, adding only a small sip of the lemonade before swallowing. Satisfied, Tails began to reorganize his first-aid kit as she proceeded to finish off her drink bit by bit under Kirche’s close attention. When he was done, he set the kit down and picked up his HUD and pointed its scanner at the blue-haired girl.

“What are you doing?” Kirche asked, peeking over at the device’s projected screen curiously.

“Well, this thing’s meant to scan things like machines or structures, not really so much living things. It doesn’t do well scanning through liquid, but I figured I could at least get a millimeter-scan of her head to make sure there aren’t any fractures,” he replied, lowering the device once it had completed its scan. Using his fingers on the touch screen, he scrolled around the three-dimensional render of Tabitha’s skull, nodding to himself. “Yep, nothing bad as far as I can tell, but I’m not a doctor, so I’ll let the school nurse have the final say on that one.”

“Wow!” she exclaimed. “That’s pretty neat! Hey, Tabitha, I’m sorta jealous. You’re getting the queen’s treatment today!”

At this, Tails burst out in laughter. “You’ve got pretty low standards if you call getting a concussion from a resurrected dead guy a good day! No, I’d even do this for Louise if it were her getting blasted. This is nothing special.”

Donning her glasses, Tabitha finally spoke up. “Still, thank you.”

“Hey, it’s what I’m here for, right?” he replied, shrugging.

Suddenly, the door at the end of the infirmary hall burst open. Colbert rushed in, his staff in one hand and a small stopper-tipped vial of reddish liquid in the other. “I heard from Louise and Saito and came as fast as I could after ransacking the storeroom for one of these,” he said, stopping to catch his breath as he struggled to collect himself.

“What is it?” Tails asked.

“It’s a healing potion,” he said, holding the vial out for Tails to see. “Simply put, it’s a simple syrup enchanted by Mrs. Cheveruse with a variety of complex healing spells. She doesn’t make them too often, but we rarely have a need for them, so we have a bit of a surplus at the moment.”

“Even then, she still manages to make them taste like death,” Kirche added, shaking her head. “You would think it would be simple not to screw up water, sugar, and fruit juice, but somehow…”

“Well, anyway, I already gave her some painkillers, but if you think mixing medications is okay, then it’s up to you,” Tails replied.

Professor Colbert nodded. "Well, that's good to hear. This potion should help cure anything else, as it's a magical all-purpose healing potion. If she needs it, I will leave the potion here. She may want to come down and say goodbye to any of her friends, however."

Taking the potion from Colbert, he handed it to Tabitha, who looked it over for a moment before downing it in a couple small sips, clearing her throat with the last of her lemon drink. "What's going on? Where are people going?" he asked.

"We're still at war, remember,” the balding professor said, an unusual scowl on his normally cheery face. “Just because we defeated their offensive into the capitol does not mean the war has ended. The Queen now wants to launch a proper defensive campaign, and has conscripted many of the male students from the academy to fight alongside her knights in the war to repel attacks from Albion. Under her orders, they will head off to training at the castle tonight to be officially inducted into the army.”

"Oh. Does that mean Saito and I will be going too?"

Colbert shook his head. “Most male students will be taking their familiars with them, but since both of your masters are female, you are not required to go. That is, if the queen doesn’t send for you personally, after your success defending the castle. If it were up to me, I would hesitate to even think of sending children to war like this,” he remarked, his sense of disgust filling the room. “Take whatever precautions you can to avoid being drafted.”

"Right,” Tails said, looking back to Tabitha. “Up to you. If you want to go say goodbye to anyone, I guess now’s the time.”

Nodding, Tabitha pushed back the sheets and slowly got out of bed, careful not to lose her balance as she picked up her staff from the bedside table. Colbert led the three down to the open field in front of the main gate, where most of the school’s male students were busy giving their farewells to their female friends as they loaded large duffel bags of their belongings onto a horse-drawn cart amidst dozens of carriages. In the middle of it all, Tails could see Guiche holding hands with Montmorency, deep in some romantic conversation. "-Return for you, Montmorency. And if I don't return, promise me you'll never forget me!" Tails could hear Guiche exclaim, as showy as always.

"Of course! How could I ever forget you?" the blond, curly-haired girl replied.

"Hey guys. What's up?" Tails asked as he walked over.

Letting go of Montmorency, he swept a handful of his signature messy hair away from his face, striking a bit of a pose in the process. "We're headed off to war for the Queen. Aren't you coming? You and Saito are the star heroes of this grand war, after all.”

"No, according to Mr. Colbert, I’m supposed to stay behind, since Louise, Kirche, or Tabitha aren’t going to war unless Henrietta gives us some special orders."

Guiche shook his head, a wan smile on his face. "I envy you. Aside from the fact that the Princess conscripted all the men, I'd still be forced to go since my dad is a general… god, I don’t look forward to spending time on the field with him. He’ll run me ragged!”

Ring popped out of his sheath at Tails’ hip. “Sounds like you’re really an heir to the family name, then!”

At the sword’s remark, Montmorency burst out laughing, shocking Guiche. “I am not!” he said in defiance, but this only made her laugh even harder, even eliciting a giggle from Kirche. “He’s totally right!” Montmorency managed to say as she tried to catch her breath between fits of laughter.

Suddenly, a wave of murmuring overtook the crowd of students as everyone’s heads turned toward a singular source. Glancing over, Tails noticed there was a new guy, dressed in a long white jacket and black pants, with a long cerulean cape flowing behind him as he walked amongst the crowd. A few girls began to approach the boy in hopes of striking up a conversation, but this quickly turned into a torrent of girls that pelted him with questions. Even Montmorency began to walk off in the mysterious boy’s direction, much to Guiche’s protest.

As his curly-haired girlfriend disappeared into the cluster of other girls, Guiche threw his hands up in frustration."Montmorency left me for another man! I can’t believe it!" he cried.

Tails couldn’t help but smile at the boy’s dramatic display. “Well, that’s what you get when you’re a chronic cheater dating someone with the romantic equivalent of an attention disorder,” he thought to himself. Turning around, he found Kirche and Tabitha missing as well; one quick glance at the crowd of girls, and he could already pick out Kirche’s brick-red hair and the curled end of Tabitha’s staff poking up above the swarm of fangirls. “Huh, Tabitha too. I’m impressed,” he thought, jogging over to get a better look at the newcomer. Squeezing his way to the inner edge of the ring of girls, he could see Louise and Saito standing on the opposite side of the ring. Both carried a disapproving frown on their face as they observed the newcomer, watching his every move with disapproving scrutiny.

“Spitting image of her, when he’s mad,” Ring said in Tails’ mind. “Probably senses competition.” Tails nodded in agreement.

"Pardon me, ladies. One at a time, please,” the new blond-haired boy said, holding out a gloved hand. The crowd of fangirls instantly fell silent, anxious to please yet eager to ask questions.

"Julio, will you be going to war?" one voice called.

The boy shook his head. “No. As a priest of Romalia, I am forbidden to go to war without consent of the Pope." Looking around, the new boy’s eyes came to rest on Louise. “My, you're beautiful. What's your name?"

"Louise. What do you need?" she replied brusquely.

"Nothing in particular. I simply wanted to introduce myself. And who might this fellow be?" he asked, looking over to Saito. “You don’t seem to have the school uniform. A commoner?”

“My name's Saito. I'm her familiar."

“Oh, I'm sorry,” the boy said, making some gesture with his hand. “A pleasure to meet you, Saito. I’m Julio. I'm sure we'll be working together throughout my stay."

Saito barely nodded, still staring the boy down. “I'm sure."

Over the din of the girls whispering to each other and their abandoned boyfriends muttering amongst themselves, a clanging handbell rang out from one of the carriages. The crowd of girls briefly turned to see their male friends board the carriages for the castle, giving them a final wave before quickly returning to their own discussions. Tails looked over to Tabitha, making his way through the crowd to her side. “Hey, if you are getting tired we can head back whenever. I have no interest in sitting around watching this guy, but if you want to stay, that's fine."

Tabitha shook her head. “Hungry.”

“Right, I’ll go see what Marteau’s up to in the kitchen,” he replied. He pushed his way out of the crowd, making his way across the green toward the kitchen with Tabitha right behind him. Aromatic scents filled the air around the doorway as he approached, reminding him just how hungry he was after fighting and flying for so long earlier that morning.

Gently pushing the door open, he weaved his way inside through the busy kitchen staff, slowly working his way over to Marteau where he stood on his overseeing stepstool, belting out orders. "Hey, Marteau, how long until lunch is ready?” he asked.

“Not long, maybe ten minutes,” the head chef replied, still sending gestures to one of his distant chefs across the kitchen. “Just waiting on one or two more dishes. This soup recipe is going to be one of my best yet!”

“Cool, I’ll look forward to it. Do you mind if Tabitha and I take an apple or something to snack on until lunch is ready?"

"Sure Tails, just write it down before you go,” he said, pointing toward the list by the door.

"Thanks! Tabitha, over here,” Tails said, heading back to the door. After brief inspection of the contents of the fruit bin hanging by the door, he picked out two green apples from the bin and jotted it down on the grocery list with its accompanying quill and ink well. He handed one of the apples to Tabitha and opened the door, following her back outside.

Still at the gate, Tails could see Kirche talking to the new boy, still surrounded by an entourage of the other girls. Professor Colbert was standing on the steps in front of the main doors of the central tower, however, trying to get the students to pay attention for a moment. “We will continue afternoon classes as usual, so expect to be in the classroom after lunch,” he called. “Professor Cheveruse will be starting new content, so I would hope you would be on time. That is all.”

As soon as Professor Colbert disappeared, the interrogation of Julio resumed. Tails idly stood around, watching and listening as the girls fervently questioned him about his background from some other country, his history with women, and more. “Seems like a decent guy, just a bit of a snob,” he thought. Noticing Tabitha beginning to turn away, he silently walked alongside her back to her dorm tower room, where she grabbed a book off off a shelf in the left-side corner near her writing desk. “Dinner,” she said, tucking the book under her arm.

“Yeah. By the way, is the headache gone?” he asked, stepping out of the room into the hallway. Tabitha nodded and shut the door behind her. Together, they made their way down to the dining hall. Finding the cavernous room still empty save for the kitchen crew bringing out the last of the platters of food, they took a seat at the end of one of the tables closest to the door. Within the minute, Louise and Saito joined them, with Louise next to Tabitha and Saito beyond her. Even professor Colbert and headmaster Osmond arrived before the rest of the students, locked in a heated debate about magic that was way over Tails’ head. “I guess all the others must still be busy with the new guy,” he thought.

“Probably burying the guy alive in their used underwear at this point,” Ring said in Tails’ mind. “Maybe even the biggest orgy known to mankind.”

Tails chuckled to himself for a moment. “You’ve got a sick mind, you know that?”

“Hey, I’m not wrong. I was watching Mrs. Cheveruse’s mind this whole time, and she was thinking of just cancelling the class and sending everyone to detention because they wouldn’t shut up. They were basically bending over for the guy.”

Finally, the main doors to the dining room swung open. The new guy stepped into the room, followed by his entourage with Kirche at the front of it all. They quickly dispersed to the tables, each clique of girls beckoning the white-clad man to sit with them. After looking at his options, his eyes came to rest on Saito and Louise, and he moved to take a seat across the table from them. Kirche quickly seated herself next to him, greeting Tails with a nod and a smile. “Julio, this is my other familiar I was telling you about, Tails,” she said. “Tails, meet Julio, the new transfer student from Romalia.”

Tails nodded and put on his best smile. “Nice to meet you,” he said.

“Likewise,” Julio said, looking over the fox with mild curiosity before turning to Louise. “So, Louise, tell me about the classes here. Are they hard? I'd assume as a second year, you and Kirche are pretty good."

Kirche quietly giggled, but quickly contained herself after an icy glare from Louise. "They’re fine, I suppose. Not terribly hard if you pay attention,” the pink-haired girl replied cooly.

"That's good. And who are you?” he asked, turning to Tabitha. She only briefly looked up from her book, surveying the boy with total disinterest before returning to her novel, not bothering to respond.

"This is Tabitha. She doesn't talk much, so don’t take it personally,” Tails offered.

Julio nodded. "My, isn't this school blessed with beautiful women!" he remarked, looking around the room as he filled his plate. Tails glanced down the table, watching as Louise and Saito looked at each other, then back at him, sharing a rare moment of consensus that this guy was in fact just as much of a douchebag as they had anticipated.

Dinner passed relatively smoothly, with only the bare minimum level of conversation between Julio and the others, mostly pertaining to the classes and daily life at the Academy. Several girls walked over and offered to take Julio for tea or board games as Tails finished up his meal, giving him the moment he needed to slip away from the boy’s occasional questions. As he got up, he stopped by Tabitha’s side. “I’m going to go do these dishes. I think I’ll probably sit in on evening classes since I don’t have much to do, so I’ll see you then,” he said, receiving a simple nod from her. Picking up his dishes, he headed back to the kitchen, happy to be away from the new kid on the block.


	40. Season 2 Chapter 6

**SEASON 2 CHAPTER 6**

Standing in front of one of the wash buckets full of soapy water, Tails finished cleaning his dishes, leaving them in a drying rack that was slowly being filled by other maids doing their job. He worked his way back to the main tower, heading up one of its many winding staircases to the main lecture hall.

Poking his head inside, he saw that only Tabitha and a few other students were inside, chatting amongst themselves as she read. He slipped into the hall, quietly taking a seat next to Tabitha. Deciding it was best not to interrupt her with mindless questions, he put his head down on the desk and shut his eyes, hoping to take a short nap.

Eventually, the classroom filled with the remaining students, including Julio. Filing in behind his students, Professor Colbert took the stage, ready to begin today's lecture. He had hardly finished detailing the day’s topic, however, when he was rudely interrupted by Agnès and a few of her Gunpowder squadron fusiliers.

"Listen up!" Agnès barked. "We are the Queen's Gunpowder Squadron! Since the country of Tristain is at war, we are under orders to use the Magic Academy as an external base of operations! Effective immediately, all classes are cancelled until further notice. Everyone, gather outside in the assembly area by the gate. Move!"

Professor Colbert looked around awkwardly, conflicted on what to do. One by one, the students began to slowly rise out of their seat, hesitating as they looked to Colbert to see if that was alright. After a moment of decisive thought, he tapped his cylindrical walking staff against the stone floor, earning his students’ immediate attention. "Students, please have a seat. The lesson will continue as planned."

Agnès turned to the man, giving him a deathly glare. "Are you defying the Queen's orders? We are at war!” she said. “They must be trained in defense.”

"And that is exactly why they must stay! To learn the follies of war would be incurable for someone so young,” Colbert argued.

Agnès drew her sword with lightning speed and held it up to Colbert’s neck, its razor-sharp point pressing gently against the startled man’s chin. "They are to come with me and train in defense, on the Queen’s orders,” she said again, this time much softer but equally as intense. “The Academy is vulnerable, and we must make it less so. If you object, you face treason. Simple as that, old man."

Under the orders of the female fusiliers, all of the students stood up, walking out of the classroom single-file. Tails and Saito purposely lingered behind, rushing forward to Colbert’s side once the guards cleared the room.

"Are you alright? She didn't hurt you, right?" Tails asked.

"No, I'm fine,” Professor Colbert said, still nervously rubbing his neck. “Please, go take care of the students, ensure they aren't drilling them too hard. I doubt they will allow me near the students while they are practicing."

"Alright, we got it," Saito said. He and Tails sprinted down the stairs, weaving their way through the halls of the Academy until they reached the lawn just outside the kitchen. The students were lined up in a square-shaped grid, awaiting instruction. Two of the women in the guard unit were going row by row, handing out staves that stood even a bit taller than Kirche, who was far and away the tallest girl of the pack. Each staff was tipped with what looked like a canvas beanbag, their contents rattling loudly as the staves were passed down the rows.

“I guess we just take a seat and wait?” Saito said.

Tails watched as one of the women walked into the middle of the formation, re-emerging with Tabitha’s staff. “One second,” he said, jogging over to the lady. “Hey, I’m her familiar. I’ll hold that for her.”

“Fine,” she said, handing him the staff. She quickly returned to her duties, leaving the fox to retreat to where Saito was sitting in the shade of the tree growing in the corner of the circular perimeter wall and kitchen building.

A dark-violet-haired woman stood in front of the group, waiting for her squadmates to finish distributing the practice spears before beginning to relay new orders. "Alright, listen up!” she yelled, her voice visibly intimidating some of the girls on the front row of the formation. “We are going to be practicing basic defensive drills with spears. You will pick a practice partner and begin basic sparring drills that we show you."

Montmorency stepped forward from the front row with her right hand in the air, gaining the instructor’s attention. "Why don't we practice combat magic instead? Wouldn't that make more sense?" she asked, drawing her wand.

Without warning, the instructor darted forward  and snatched the wand from her hand. She placed her other hand in front of Montmorency, blocking her as she tried to retrieve her wand. "Try fighting me now,” she said, waiting until Montmorency realized it was futile to try to get her wand back. “See? You are useless without your wand. That's the problem with magicians like yourself." Her point made, the instructor handed the wand back to blond-haired girl and pushed her back into formation. She then began walking the girls through basic stabs and blocks, having them mirror her motions to get a feel of things.

Uninterested in the students’ practice, Tails turned his attention to the staff resting in his lap. Each knob and knot in the wood was worn smooth save for the end that touched the ground. The two sky-blue horizontal stripes that wrapped around the wooden staff just before it began to curl inwards in a hook shape caught his attention; in between the two blue bands, a short series of numbers were scratched into the sturdy wood, well-worn and hardly visible even with the staff right in his lap. “A date for something?” he thought.

Suddenly, a loud crack of wood on stone rang out right nearby. Tails watched as Saito scrambled to his feet as one of the women under Agnès’ command began swiping away at him with a wooden practice sword. He could see another one of the guards bearing down on him, forcing him to launch to his feet with his tails to get out of the way. Dodging the woman’s swings, he swung the staff at the woman. The blow connected, knocking her back with incredible force that seemed completely disproportionate to how hard he had swung.

“What the hell?” Tails thought, looking over the staff. It had almost seemed, for a moment, that the staff had become really heavy just before impact. Worried that he might break Tabitha’s staff from swinging it like that, he tossed the staff aside. He hardly had time to think about it before the woman was bearing down on him, recovered from the unusually heavy blow.

Weaponless, the fusilier forced him to dodge and jump out of the way of each blow as fast as he could, occasionally relying on his runes’ shield to block blows until he could work his way inside. Finally, he saw his moment; the lady swinging the wooden sword over-extended in a lunging horizontal swipe at his head level. What normally would have been a clean swipe at the exposed areas in a grown man’s armor below his arms gave him plently of room below to duck inside.

With a sudden lunge under the swing, he planted a solid punch into her gut. While he wasn’t quite as strong as Knuckles, it was enough to take the woman’s breath away for a moment, giving him just the combo opener he needed. He wrapped his tails around the back of one of the lady’s knees and pulled hard, sending her sprawling to the ground. To finish it off, he ripped the Gunpowder Squadron member’s signature flintlock from its holster on her hip and pulled back the hammer far enough for it to click into place. The lady, still on the ground, tossed aside the sword and held up her hands, recognizing her defeat.

"Alright, that's enough," Agnès called, walking over to the group with her usual cool composition. "We'll need to have both of you practice more on dodges, since you should always be ready for the worst-case scenario. Miles, that was a good punch, but you should have distanced yourself further from your opponent to get out of the way rather than relying on your shield more often. Margaret, the assault was good, but remember not to overextend on your swings. You’re used to fighting a full-sized person, and your muscle memory got the best of you."

Tails nodded, glancing over to Saito as he caught his breath. The boy had somehow managed to steal one of the beanbag spears from one of the other Gunpowder Squadron women, still locked in his sparring match against the woman with the wooden sword. Gently shifting his grip on the pistol to the barrel to avoid pulling the trigger, Tails helped the fusilier back to her feet, handing the pistol to her. Nodding in thanks, she smoothly de-cocked the hammer and slipped it back into its holster.

Seeing that Agnès would be busy chewing out Saito for a moment, Tails glanced over to the students. Some of the students were busy practicing with their friends, but most of them were looking to practice with Julio. Off to one side, he could see Tabitha practicing with one of the fusilier guards, sparring at a much faster pace than the other students. “Huh. I guess she knows some stuff,” he thought, impressed.

Ring slid out of his sheath at Tails’ hip to speak. “I mean, the butler back at her home did say she was a chevalier, a knight of the realm of Gallia. It’s not like you become a knight without knowing how to beat the crap out of someone. Although she’s first and foremost a magic user, someone probably trained her in the basics of using a quarterstaff. Heck, you felt that enchantment on her staff.”

“Yeah, what was that?” Tails said, looking back to her staff. “It’s almost like it got super heavy as I swung it.”

“Yeah, there are spells like that. It’s in the same family of enchantments as the weightlessness ones airship builders use on their keels, if I remember right. Weaponizing it is new to me, though. To get it to activate only when you want is pretty tough, maybe even beyond her skill -- otherwise, every knight and their mother would have it on their swords. I wouldn’t be surprised if the staff is an heirloom with all sorts of nasty square-level enchantments on it.”

Suddenly, cries of disappointment arose from the crowd of girls around Julio, catching Tails’ attention. He could see the blond-haired boy standing in front of Louise as he walked over, holding out his training spear toward the girl.

"Louise, would you care to practice with me?" he asked.

"Uhh, sure?" Louise replied.  She was still doing her best to maintain an impassive face, but a slight blush gave away her embarrassment.

"Her, of all people?" Kirche argued, peeved that she wasn't picked.

"Alright, let's begin. Come at me," Julio said to Louise, ignoring the horde of girls behind him. Louise looked around nervously, then made a feeble jab at him with the beanbag end of the spear. Julio easily dodged, closing the distance to her.

"Try again. This time, anticipate where I may be, which probably won't be straight ahead." he said, backing off again.

"…ok." Louise replied, prepping to try again. She clearly wasn't comfortable, but Julio refused to leave her alone, having her try over and over again. As soon as Agnès was done talking to him, Saito walked over and put a hand on Julio's spear to catch his attention. "Hey, can't you tell Louise isn't comfortable? Knock it off and go practice elsewhere."

"Alright, Saito," Julio said, dropping his staff. "I have an idea. You're supposed to be pretty strong, as I’ve heard from Kirche. How about a duel? The winner gets to kiss Louise. Say, Tails, you’re also her familiar, correct,” he added, turning to the fox. “Kirche had good things to say about you as well. You’re welcome to join if you like.”

"You're on!" Saito said, defiantly. “Come on, Tails, we’ve got this!”

Louise butted in, throwing her staff on the ground. “Hey, I never agreed to this! Tails, bet Kirche or Tabitha or something. I don’t want to be kissed by this jerk twice!”

“Thanks for the confidence booster,” Tails replied, rolling his eyes. He glanced over to Kirche, who was just beginning to step forward and volunteer herself, but he shook his head. “No, Kirche, you would just WANT me to lose,” he said, eliciting a hands-on-hips pouty look from the red-haired girl. “Then again, I don’t think Tabitha would let you even get close if I did lose, but that’s on you. What are the rules?”

"Tomorrow afternoon, before lunch. Practice swords only, no outside help. Fair?" Julio asked.

"Fine," Tails and Saito said in unison. Saito walked off the field with Louise, likely headed toward her room to talk the duel over as they left the others behind. The students slowly returned to their practice routine as Tails headed back over to his shady spot underneath the kitchen’s tree, picking up Tabitha’s staff he had thrown aside and taking a seat against the wall. In reality, he was a little nervous challenging Julio. He had watched him during spear practice and had noted that he seemed relatively skilled in combat.

It wasn’t long until Kirche, having explained the situation to Tabitha, managed to get her out of her practicing routine with the Gunpowder Squadron women to take a break. Tails handed back Tabitha’s staff as the two girls took a seat next to him.

"You know, you didn’t have to say that out loud,” Kirche said, breaking the silence.

“What, that you were going to have Tails lose so you could kiss Julio? You’re lying to yourself if you say you wouldn’t at least run the idea past him. I could see it in your thoughts,” Ring replied, popping out of his sheath at Tails’ hip to speak.

“Hey, you stay out of my head!” Kirche cried in annoyance. “Seriously, learn to keep to yourself.”

“Your tits spilling out of your half-unbuttoned shirt call you a hypocrite, since they sure as hell don’t keep to themselves.”

“Now that’s just low!” Kirche said as Tails forcefully pushed Ring back into his sheath.

“Not as low as her moral code regarding boyfriends,” Ring said in Tails’ mind.

“Seriously, Ring, stop,” Tails thought. “It’s going from funny to being an asshole real fast.”

“Fine, fine, I was just teasing.”

“Anyway, I don’t really care which one of you enters for the bet,” Tails said with a shrug, “since I’m going to do my best to win, regardless. I agree with Saito on this one, this guy needs to be knocked down a notch or two. He’s really getting on my nerves. Besides, Kirche, even if Tabitha does take the dare, you can always ask the guy out afterward, right?”

“Win,” Tabitha said, almost as if she were ordering him to. Tails got the sense that she didn’t like him any more than he or Saito did.

“Right. By the way, you holding out ok, Tabitha?” Tails asked, glancing over at his friend. “I saw you going at it pretty hard with that lady over there. I dunno if that aspirin is wearing off or not, but Professor Colbert said to try to take it easy while that healing potion takes effect. I can get you another aspirin if the headaches come back, but that might’ve been my only lemonade electrolyte powder tablet.”

Tabitha nodded. After a few more minutes of rest, the two girls returned to their drills for the rest of the afternoon as Tails sat peacefully rested, keeping a close eye on Tabitha's movements for any sign of weakness. Satisfied that Colbert’s potion seemed to have done its job, he pulled up his T-Buster and began casually playing around with the device’s diagnostics tools, idly fiddling with the many settings.

Hours slipped by as Tails waited, occasionally dozing off between one-off conversations with Ring and playing with his T-Buster or wristcomm. It was almost evening when the cavalrywomen finally let the students off to dinner. As he stood up to head to the kitchen, though, Saito and Agnès approached him with wooden practice swords in hand.

"Tails, Agnès has offered to train us personally for the match tomorrow. Come on," Saito said, tossing Tails a practice sword. With a yawn, the fox followed the two outside the gate to the grass field outside.

Agnès turned to face the two in the evening light, raising her wooden sword. "Alright, Saito, come at me."

Tails took a step back and sat against the wall, watching attentively. Saito made a lunge at Agnès, but was quickly reprimanded for the mistake with a sidestep and a hearty smack on the back with the blunt face of Agnès' blade.

"Watch your opponent's movements and look to strike where they will be, not where they are!" Agnès called. Saito continued his rush, swinging vertically, horizontally, diagonally, and just about every variation therein in his attempt to strike Agnès. She dodged most of his swings with ease, the rare but satisfying crack of wood on wood ringing out in the few instances where she deemed blocking his wild swings necessary. Retaliation for each one of his poorly-timed swings was swift; with each unrefined swipe of Saito’s blade, Agnès brought her own crashing down on his shoulders, back, and legs. The process continued for about fifteen minutes, until Saito was bent over in exhaustion, heaving hard.

"Alright, Saito, take a break," Agnès stated, pushing the boy toward the stone perimeter wall to take a seat. "We'll see if Miles does any better."

Tails switched spots with Saito, taking his sword from him as they passed each other.

"Dual wielding? Interesting choice to start with," Agnès said, eyeing the fox suspiciously.

"It's how I need to learn to fight when I’m using Ring and my T-Buster at the same time, since my T-Buster is more or less affixed to my arm when it’s up, so I figured it'd be the best practice," Tails replied.

“You won’t be able to use two swords during the duel tomorrow, so put one down,” the peach-haired lady said.

“I’m not practicing for the duel tomorrow,” Tails said, shaking his head. “This is for real practice.”

With both swords low at the ready, he began circling Agnès, watching her movements as she turned to stay focused on him. He moved in with a quick sweep, bringing his left-handed sword low toward her stomach in a thrust. She successfully blocked with sweeping side blow. What she hadn't expected, however, was for Tails to drop his right hand sword and push past her, placing his hand on the small of her back. Pushing with his hand and hacking against her feet with a sweep of his right tail, he forced Agnès to stumble forward, briefly falling down before scrambling back to her feet as Tails retrieved his fallen sword.

"Interesting. You mix swordplay with hand to hand combat,” she remarked, taking a ready stance once more. “Although you shouldn’t drop your sword like that. Loose weapons can be turned against you.”

“Well, in real combat, if I were using my T-Buster, that move would’ve simulated shutting off the laser beam and just hitting someone with it,” Tails said, dropping his swords to pull up his T-Buster. To his surprise, however, Agnès leaped forward as he was busy with the device, launching a quick swing toward his head. He had hardly flinched by the time the blade crashed into the pulsing blue energy shield that had blinked into existence next to his head, shattering the sturdy wood from the sudden rebound. Tails quickly raised his T-Buster and let loose a single stun bolt point-blank to the woman’s stomach, dropping her to the ground.

"What the heck! I was just trying to explain something!” Tails said, helping Agnès to her feet.

“You shouldn’t ever take your eyes off of your opponent, even in practice,” Agnès said. “Your shield saved you yet again, but you should never rely on the shield alone. Shields break.”

Tails didn’t quite know what to say to that. It hadn’t really crossed his mind, whether or not this shield from his familiar’s runes would ever break. “Right, I guess he did say no outside help, which might count that shield… I’m not really sure how to turn it off, though. It just sorta, you know, IS.”

“Whatever. You at least have some fighting skill, so I would say you’re at least somewhat prepared for tomorrow,” she replied, glancing over toward the resting boy. “He definitely still needs work, though. I’ll send him for you if I manage to finish with him by tonight.”

Tails nodded and retreated to the wall, handing Saito the sword he still held. Only staying to watch the start of Saito’s sparring, he jogged back. He set the sword against the stone wall and proceeded through the gate, back into the school interior. The sun was almost down, the remaining slivers casting an orange glow through the windows of the hallways. Presuming that Colbert would want to have an evening class to make up for lost time that afternoon, Tails made his way back to the classroom, approaching the door. However, he soon found himself waiting outside, his ear pressed to the solid wood to try to listen in on the two people talking to each other inside.

"…the matter, Colbert? Surely this would benefit the nation."

"But think what dangers lie ahead if such technology were to fall into enemy hands! It's a major liability. They've been able to reverse-engineer many of the technologies we've ever fielded against them, as we have done with the Gunpowder Squadron."

“True. Although I feel that many of the designs and ideas behind the Dragon and Miles' equipment is too advanced for exact replication, they could gain a dangerous advantage. The design you saw Miss Tabitha carrying, for example, is crucial.”

“Sounds like professor Colbert and Osmond in there…” Tails thought. “He must’ve been watching when I gave Tabitha that handgun I build for her.”

"…Yes. I will ask if he can refrain from sharing his designs. It feels wrong to block such creativity, but it is dangerous to place such advancements in places where it could fall into the wrong hands."

Sensing a break in the conversation, Tails gently opened the door and stuck his head in, surveying the room. Headmaster Osmond and professor Colbert stood at the central podium just to the right of the door. They turned to face him, looks of nervousness across their faces – realizing that someone might have been eavesdropping. They both let out a sigh of relief when they saw it was the fox himself.

"Ah, Miles," professor Colbert stated, clearing his throat. "We need to talk to you for a moment."

“Sure thing! What's the matter?" Tails asked, stepping inside and shutting the door behind him.

"It's a matter of national security, so we must ensure that what you will say here does not move outside this room," Headmaster Osmond said, the gravity of the situation evident in his voice. "We have been observing your technologies and advancements, and must ascertain their security, so to speak."

"I already heard everything through the door. Sorry for eavesdropping."

"Oh," Professor Colbert said, resting his head in his hand. "How much did you hear?"

"Starting around 'keep me from letting advanced technology out of reach'. Also, something to do with people reverse-engineering my designs."

"Right," Headmaster Osmond stated resolutely. "We have something we need to show you. If you would follow me, please."

The two men pushed past Tails to the door, motioning for him to follow. They trekked through the stone halls of the Academy, the two men’s staves clacking against the stone with every step, until they reached the base of stairwell that lead to Osmond's office. Osmond reached forward with his staff and placed a hand on a stone on the wall opposite the first step of the circular staircase, muttering a short enchantment under his breath. Without warning, the wall disappeared without a sound, revealing a continuation of the staircase under the Academy.

“Huh, secret doorway. Cool,” Tails commented, impressed. He followed Osmond into the stairwell while professor Colbert sealed the sealed the path behind them with another enchantment. Lit torches lined the stairwell as the three descended into the ground, but the air slowly became colder and colder. Tails held his hand near the flames of the torches, but felt no heat radiating from the flickering lights.

"Are these magical?" he asked.

"Yes. They eliminate the need for replacing wooden torches as a real fire would require." Professor Colbert stated, eager to explain the magic.

"So, what’s so important you guys are hiding down here?" In his mind, Tails knew it was something crucial to make Professor Colbert so energetic, borderline giddy.

"This is extremely secret, only known by Professor Cheveruse, Colbert, and myself," Headmaster Osmond stated. "This is a secret vault for items of utmost importance. The Staff of Destruction you recovered was originally intended for this vault, and was only in the vault it was stolen from as temporary holding."

The group finally reached the bottom of the stairwell to a dark room. Despite the absence of light, Tails could tell the room was rather large as the sound of their footsteps briefly echoed back. Professor Colbert waved his wand, igniting a variety of chandeliers and torches around the room simultaneously, illuminating the vault's contents.

After a taking a moment to register what he saw, Tails just about lost his shit.


	41. Season 2 Chapter 7

**SEASON 2 CHAPTER 7:**

"You guys are sitting on all of this?!" Tails exclaimed, running over to the first row of display cases. The vault was lined with thousands of display cases of various sizes in rows along the walls and in aisles throughout the room. Each glass case contained an item, ranging from books to kitchen appliances to weapons of various periods, even some stuff from other worlds he didn’t recognize. Most important to him, though, were the odd pieces of technology from his own world, something along the lines of Black Arms tech.

"Do you recognize any of this, Miles?" Headmaster Osmond asked.

"Yeah! Most of this stuff is from either Chris’ or Saito’s version of Earth, as far as I can tell,” the Mobian said, running his hand along some of the dusty glass cases. “There are a few things that look to be from elsewhere, but it's nothing I can't try to figure out."

"What's this, Miles? It looks like a weapon, given these slots on the top and the springs inside. It's a personal favorite of mine, since I found it myself!" Professor Colbert exclaimed, withdrawing a square metal box from one of the glass cabinets. Noticing the two slots on top and the cable that trailed from the bottom of the device, Tails let out a short laugh.

"That's not a weapon, Professor. That's an old toaster,” he said, catching his breath. “Toasters toast toast, as an old joke from Earth goes. It needs electricity to work, and in specific amounts, so we'd have to build a generator and some circuitry to make it work."

"Are any of these things capable of being weaponized?" Headmaster Osmond asked, intrigued at the prospect of understanding these otherworldly things.

Tails shrugged. "Depends. It looks like a few of these are weapons already, such as this here," Tails said, stopping in front of one of the many storage cases. Professor Colbert and Headmaster Osmond made their way over to observe what Tails was pointing at. "This is a hunting rifle,” he said. “It's similar in concept to the muskets that the Gunpowder Squadron use, but it's much faster, safer, and more accurate. It uses pre-measured smokeless powder charges in a contained casing with the bullet mounted on top. That lever there is used to pull a new cartridge up from a magazine that probably holds five or six rounds. A good shot could probably kill a man at a thousand yards. People use these for hunting animals as well as in warfare, although they will build them differently for wartime conditions. Where did you find all of these?"

"They have been found throughout the years by our staff, as well as by Queen Henrietta’s guard on occasion,” Osmond said, stroking his beard. “Recently, they have been appearing at an increased rate. We believe it has to do with the presence of Saito, having come from the other world.”

Tails continued browsing, taking a moment to look over the contents of each case with fascination. "Some of these things are waaay older than Saito," he said. "For example, earlier this year a Count tried to take one of our friends, a maid named Siesta. We bartered her freedom with a book, which turned out to be from Saito's world. He said it was pretty old, too. No, if it were related to someone here, I'm more interested as to who caused this alien tech to show up." He walked over to one particular specimen hanging on a rack in a case mounted to the wall of the chamber. He looked over its design, deducing that it was some sort of combination gunblade, with a short sharp-edged bar of pulsing black material ending in an opening. Tails opened the case and reached for the blade, removing it from it's hook.

"Wait!" Professor Colbert called, rushing over to Tails, but it was too late. The handle pulsed red as a small blade of pink-colored energy leaped from the opening in the tip of the physical bar. The energy blade measured about two feet in length, consisting of a weightless plasma much like his T-Buster, allowing for easy strokes. Tails took a few test swings, causing the blade to emit a satisfying humming noise as it shimmered through the air.

"You know about this?" Headmaster Osmond asked in amazement. "The last man that held this was impaled! We believed it was a self defense mechanism, and had to bring it here by levitation to avoid falling victim to it as well."

Tails laughed and shook his head. "He was probably holding the darn thing backwards. The handle senses a heat signature, and turns on automatically when grabbed. Based on the design and materials, I think it’s a Black Arms laser-saber, although I never had the chance to observe one up close when we were fighting them off."

"Who are these 'Black Arms' you speak of?" Professor Colbert asked.

"Aggressive, bloodthirsty aliens that survive by invading planets, capturing their inhabitants and breeding them for feeding their young, but we dealt with them a few years back," Tails replied. "They are all dead, or should be. If this really is Black Arms Tech, it was probably brought here by a command unit that was summoned here by you guys on accident. Most units of the Black Arms carried ranged equipment; swords were only for the elite command or close-quarters boarding parties. Where did you guys find this?" Tails pressed a button on the blade’s pommel to shut the device down before returning it to it's rack in the case.

"It was found at a battleground, where reports of black monsters slew many royal guards,” Professor Colbert replied. “It supposedly took many magicians to force them to the return to the forest, and no sightings of them have appeared since. We believed that they returned to whatever world they came from."

"That sounds about right for Black Arms, but that shouldn't be an issue. They couldn't breed without their asteroid-ship, the Black Comet, which we destroyed back in my world, so they should all be dead by now anyways."

Tails continued to browse through the selections of various equipment in the room, fascinated by the variety. "There really was no discrimination in what was taken from other worlds," he thought, stopping in front of what looked like an unopened clear tube of lime-green tennis balls. He roamed through the room, occasionally stopping at certain cases to collect a few things in a borrowed green fabric grocery bag with the word “Safeway” faintly printed on the front.

As he proceeded to the back of the massive underground hall, the objects became larger and larger. By the time he reached the end of the hall, most of the objects were too big for cases, instead being covered by canvas coverings held to the floor by weights. The faint smell of ancient machine grease permeated the air in the back of the room, bringing back waves of memories of sunny days he’d spent tending to the first iterations of his propeller-based Tornado biplanes. His curiosity urged him to drop his bag of goodies and take a peek under the tarps, but Osmond was on him in a flash.

"Please don't do that, Miles," Headmaster Osmond stated. "These objects are of the greatest importance, and are under many levels of protection magic. Lifting those cloths would activate them, killing you."

Tails quickly dropped the cloth and grabbed his bag, beating a hasty retreat away from the masked objects. Professor Colbert peeked into Tails' bag, taking in his selection of goods from the cases. "What are you taking?" he asked.

"Just a few odds and ends for the workshop," Tails said, holding the bag open for him to see inside. "A dartboard, the Black Arms laser sword, a small camping lamp to use as a worklight, this rocket propelled grenade, anbook I thought Tabitha would like, and a couple different kinds of non-lethal grenades. Nothing too terribly special."

"Alright. When you are done with the objects, return them to my office," Headmaster Osmond said. "We should be heading back. Mrs. Cheveruse was planned to meet with me, and I don’t want to hold her up."

The three worked their way back up the stairs, their footsteps echoing off of the cold stone walls. Reaching the top, Osmond stopped at the wall at the top, repeating his chant with a hand against one of the bricks in the wall. The wall dissolved out of existence, revealing the rest of the stairwell up to the old man’s office.

"Thank you for this, Mister Osmond! These'll be plenty handy in upgrading Saito's Zero, when I get the chance," Tails said. “I’ll be sure to be careful with this stuff like you said.”

“Of course, Miles. Thank you for your cooperation,” the old man replied. “Have a good afternoon.”

Tails turned away and took off for the workshop, only stopping to admire the distant sunset for a moment. Stepping into the small wooden building, he walked over to the open trap door and clambered down, careful about handling the bag with its explosive contents. “Wait a second, I thought I always put the floorboard panel back,” he thought.

"Hi, Mr. Miles!"

Tails whipped around, ready for combat with his other hand on Ring’s handle. A smiling blue-haired girl stood in the center of the workshop, stark naked and staring at him with a happy grin. Tails quickly blocked his view, embarrassed.

"Do me a favor and put on some clothes, please. And who are you? How did you get down here?" Tails asked.

"I'm Ilococoo, Miss Tabitha's servant! Nice to meet you, Mr. Miles!" the girl stated, still not moving. Tails looked around for some sort of cloth, but was unable to find any. He lowered his arm but refused to make eye contact with Ilococoo, gazing off at his “messily organized” workbench. "You might recognize me better as this form," she added. Tails raised his arm again as a bright flash enveloped the room, followed by a flapping of wings and a short gust of wind. When he was able to see again, Sylphid stood before him, crouched in a low resting position. Tails stood agape, not quite sure as to what happened.

"Wait a second… Sylphid, you have a human form?" Tails asked incredulously, his thoughts racing. "Who else can transform like that?"

Sylphid transformed back into the human body, bathing the workshop in light again. "I am a Nature Dragon, also called a Rhyme Dragon in the older tongues,” she said. “We have the ability to transform between human and bestial forms at will, as well as intelligence beyond that of normal dragons and magical powers of our own. Not all Rhyme Dragons are actual dragons; some are griffons, bears, chimeras, and other things, but are called Rhyme Dragons because of their similar abilities. Most of them are nearly wiped out, though."

"That's really cool! Tails said, averting his eyes again. "Does anyone else know of your human form?"

Ilococoo shook her head. "Nope! Miss Tabitha told me to keep it a secret when I was summoned, so I follow her orders. I found my way down here when following her one day, so hopefully no one saw me.”

"Alright, well, you are welcome to stay as long as you like, but don't touch anything. Most of this stuff is dangerous, delicate, or both,” he said, walking over to his workbench to set his bag of stuff down. “In the meantime, I’m going to go get you something to wear." He climbed back up the workshop ladder, careful to replace the floor panels before heading outside.

The entire school seemed devoid of life as the fox jogged over to the dorm tower that housed Tabitha’s room. “I guess everyone must be at dinner or something,” he thought, jogging up the stairs of the otherwise dead-silent dorm tower. Entering Tabitha's room, he found that Tabitha was away at dinner as he had thought. He walked over to her wardrobe and gingerly picked out an outfit, being sure not to ruffle up the other waiting clothes. He froze up a bit at the thought of having to deal with panties for the first time, but forced himself to do it after the thought of an embarrassingly naked Ilococoo waiting in his workshop crossed his mind. He wrapped it all up in a spare clean bed sheet he would put over the hammock if she stayed the night there, although he would probably ask her to turn back into her dragon form first.

For a brief moment, Tails could’ve sworn he heard noise outside. He walked over to the back of the room and popped open the window to look out over the field, seeing students swarming across the field to return to their dorms for the night. "Now what?" he thought. “I don’t want to get caught carrying this stuff, if possible. It would look weird if I were just walking around with her clothes.”

“Wrap it all up in Tabitha's dirty bedsheets,” Ring said in his mind. “If you get caught, it'll look like you're just taking dirty laundry instead of a girl's clothes for devious purposes.

“Oh, duh. Why didn’t I think of that…”

Tails removed the quilt from Tabitha's bed and folded it up, then proceeded to do the same with the bedsheet and fitted sheet. He placed the clean outfit inside the bundle of sheets and placed the ball of fabric inside a laundry bag. He then shut the window he had opened and made his way back out of the room and down the stairs. He had barely made it out of the main door of the dorm tower before Kirche found him.

"Hey, Tails! I was wondering where you went,” she said. “You missed dinner.”

Tails shrugged. "Yeah, I don't mind, I had some work to do so I’ll just grab something from the kitchen later" he replied, hefting the laundry bag over his shoulder. "Let me just run this to my workshop and I'll go grab something."

A look of curiosity crossed Kirche's face. "Why do you need Tabitha's laundry?"

"I need it for… a new machine I'm building that'll wash laundry!" Tails said, pausing momentarily to collect himself. It wasn't like him to lie, so he had to collect his thoughts. "It takes too long to wash big bedsheets like this by hand, so with a clothes washer, you could just put it inside, hit a button, and go about doing other work while it washes the sheets for you. They're commonplace in Saito's world and mine, too."

"Very cool! You guys have so much cool stuff in your world. I wish I could visit someday," Kirche said, going a bit daydreamy on Tails. "Anyways," she said, snapping back to reality, "Don't forget. Food first, build your machine later. Don’t starve yourself."

"Sure," Tails said, slowly backing away with his bagged bundle of laundry. As soon as he was inside Colbert's level of the workshop, he stopped to wipe his face, which had been sweating profusely beneath his fur.

Ring popped into Tails' head with a short laugh. "Jeez, kid, you don't need to get all worked up. She didn't guess a thing."

"Yeah," Tails thought as he made his way to the trapdoor and down the ladder. "It’s just really weird, that’s all. I’ve never been a good liar, so I’m sorta surprised it worked.” Dumping the bag out on the hammock, he dug out the slightly rumpled clothes from the center of the ball of sheets and handed them to Ilococoo, refusing to look at her head-on. "Do me a favor and put these on, then stay down here. I want to do one thing real fast, and then I'll go make something for dinner for you."

As she donned her new clothes, Tails walked over to his workbench and began unpacking the green fabric grocery bag of vault stuff from earlier, lining up the goods on his workbench. Picking up the dartboard and a spare piece of bar stock profesor Colbert had left him, he brought up his T-Buster with his wristcomm and engaged the plasma cutter, walking over to the opposite wall. A quick jab of the beam of plasma left a neat hole with glowing-hot edges just large enough for the bar stock. Careful not to burn himself, he slipped the bar stock partway into the hole and held the beam close to where the bar met the wall, slowly welding them together. Not bothering to wait for the metal to cool, he gently hung the dartboard by its metal hanging wire and shut down his T-Buster. He jogged back over to the workbench and picked up one of the small magnet-tipped darts, lobbing it at the board from across the room. The dart hit the board with a satisfying smack, a bit down and to the left of the bullseye. He practiced with the other five darts, but was unable to get a bullseye hit, ranging from halfway toward the circle's edge to overlapping the edge of the bullseye in accuracy.

"Tails, what are you doing?" Ilococoo asked.

Tails turned to respond, but couldn’t help but stifle an embarrassed laugh. The clothes he’d brought her weren’t even in the ballpark of fitting; he’d somehow not even thought of the possibility that she wouldn’t be able to properly wear the clothes of someone a head shorter and certainly more developed. The end result was some odd mix between a comical bad hair day, laundry shrinkage, and something Kirche might wear to impress the guys. “We’re gonna have to get you some different clothes. Maybe Kirche’s stuff would fit better, but there’s no way I’m headed up there right now. If she’s home, she’d probably lock me in or something,” he said.

Ilococoo looked down at her outfit, seemingly finding nothing wrong with it. “Just do me a favor and wrap up in that bedsheet over there, it'll get cold here during the evening," he added, pointing at the bedsheet he had left on the hammock. He knew it was a partial lie since his fur kept him warm, so he never really noticed whether it got too cold or not, but being underground out of the wind would keep things warmer than aboveground at night. He made a mental note to either head back to the vault and look for a small space heater or to build his own, when he had free time.

His stomach let out a low growl, reminding him that he hadn’t eaten yet. “Alright, I’ll be right back with some food,” he said, walking over to the ladder. “Be back in a sec.”


	42. Season 2 Chapter 8

**SEASON 2 CHAPTER 8:**

 

Tails was tired as could be. Even with Saito's help, cooking for the two of them felt exhausting – a testament to how long the day seemed to drag on. He was seated at one of the dining hall tables, idly picking at the last of his vegetables with his fork. Saito stood up as he finished the last of his dinner, reaching for Tails’ plate. "I'll do the dishes if you’re done. You did most of the cooking, so I'll get this," he said with a grin.

"No, I’ll get it,” Tails replied, shoving the last piece of broccoli into his mouth.

Saito shook his head. "I don't want to be around Louise any more than I have to tonight, so let me do it. She's still mad at me for starting that duel with Julio. By the way, do you know when the Zero will be brought back? How long will it take to fix?"

"Beats me," Tails said with a shrug, pushing his plate to Saito. "No idea when the Princess will have it brought back. Odds are, it might need some replacements of any water damaged electronics, and I'll need to inspect the internals for rust and replace washed-out grease. Then, if it's possible, I'd like to do some upgrade work. The plane is really lightly armored so that it gets the most speed it can out of a lightweight engine, but if I upgrade the engine, I should also be able to add a bit of armor to the crucial areas without affecting top speed or acceleration too much. Turning radius and neutral-ascent speed may change, but not by much, hopefully. I also have some offensive upgrades in mind, but that's a secret!" he added, the corner of his mouth creeping up in a sly smile.

"Good to hear. I'll be looking forward to trying it all out when you've got it done. Anyways, goodnight." Saito walked out of the room with the plates and silverware, leaving Tails standing alone in the hall, wondering where to head.

"Probably no-one's gonna care if I pull an all-nighter again in the lab… oh crap! I forgot to take Ilococoo her food!" Tails thought, sprinting for the kitchen. Beating Saito to the kitchen door, he rushed inside and hastily scooped out the last of the pot of spaghetti and meat sauce he had cooked, tucking some raw broccoli off to one side. He dashed back outside and across the green to the workshop, careful not to spill food as he came to a stop in front of the door. Shutting the door behind him, he made his way down to his section of the workshop, ignoring the fact that he left the trapdoor open in his haste.

Ilococoo was asleep on his hammock, wrapped up in the sheet he had brought her. He nudged her with his tail, prodding her on the shoulder. "…hwhah?" she mumbled, stirring slightly.

"Food," Tails said, holding the lukewarm bowl of pasta forward. "Sor-"

Ilococoo shot out of bed, eyeing the food with unrivaled intensity. "THANKYOUSOMUCHILOVEFOOD!" she blurted, seizing the bowl and silverware from Tails' hands and violently digging in.

Realizing he had forgot to grab a napkin, Tails stepped over to his workbench and grabbed the least greasy rag he could find, handing it to the blue-haired girl in exchange for her now-empty bowl. “Dang, she pretty much inhaled that,” he thought with amazement.

"Thank you for the food!" Ilococoo said, wiping her face and hands clean of the carnage. "Oh, rats. I got some on Miss Tabitha's clothes. I hope she won't be too mad," she added, trying to rub out a bit of sauce from the chest of her shirt.

"Don't worry about it, I'll get it cleaned up later when I do Tabitha's laundry," Tails said, setting the empty plate aside on the workbench. "It's not like anyone besides me is going to see you in those clothes, anyways. Anyhow, you are welcome to stay the night here, but I'm going to be doing some work on a few projects here."

"Mr. Miles? What is this thing you hung up over here earlier? Is it a picture?" Ilococoo asked, pointing at the dartboard.

"No, it's a game. See those darts sticking to it? Bring them over here," Tails said, turning to face her. Hopping up from the hammock, Ilococoo retrieved the darts and brought them back to the fox. "You take your darts and throw them at the board, taking turns with whoever you are playing with. The numbers around the circle indicate how many points you lose for landing the dart in the slice. The red and green dot in the center is the bullseye, and the other two bands are the double and triple value sections. Red is double, green is triple the value on the side. You agree on a set value to start from and "lose" points until whoever reaches zero first wins. Watch."

Taking the darts from her, Tails threw three red darts at the board, scoring a twenty, fourteen, and six close to the bullseye. "So, I would have taken forty points off of my current count, whatever we were starting at. You would want to do your best to beat me to zero. You can only win by a bullseye or score in the triple or double ring sections. It takes throwing practice, but you'll get used to it if you work at it."

Ilococoo took a few moments to accustom herself to the feel of the three green darts, with the odd magnetically-weighted tips. With nothing more than a quick glance, she then tossed the darts with lightning speed at the board, scoring an outer bullseye, ten, and sixteen in rapid succession.

Tails gave a short whistle. "Hey, you're a natural at this!” he remarked.

Ilococoo gave a short laugh, but immediately went rigid. Noticing her gaze, Tails turned to see what was holding her attention, finding Tabitha standing at the bottom of the ladder. "Oh, hey Tabitha,” Tails said. "When did you get in? I didn't hear you enter."

Tabitha didn't answer, simply taking a few steps over to Ilococoo and giving her a light smack on the head with her staff. "Stay hidden. Don't bother Tails," she stated bluntly.

"She wasn't bothering me, Tabitha. Don't worry about it," Tails said. Without warning, Tabitha gave him an equal smack over the head, clearly unhappy. "Keep it secret," she added.

"Fine, fine, I got it," Tails mumbled, rubbing his head. He perked up, remembering something. "Hey Tabitha, I got something for you I thought you might like," he said. He walked over to his workbench and grabbed the book from the pile of vault goods, giving it a quick leaf-through for damage. "It's a French-translated copy of a collection of fairy tales buy a guy name Andersen. Given that you like that novel  _Ivaldi_  so much , I figured these would be pretty similar, although they’re a little on the dark side. It shouldn't be too hard to read, since your Gallian is pretty much identical. Even I was able to read it a bit based on what you taught me."

Tabitha took the book from his hands, curiously leafing through the pages. She walked over to the hammock and laid back, flipping through the book to find a story that interested her. Seeing that she was satisfied, Tails turned back to Ilococoo, who was rubbing her head and staring down at the floor. He retrieved the darts from the dartboard and handed them to her.

"I need to do some work, but you're welcome to keep playing. Just don't hit Tabitha, she might get mad again," he said. Ilococoo nodded cheerfully and began lobbing the darts once more, nothing but a rhythmic smacking noise in the back of Tails' head as he got into a working mood. His mind was overflowing with work he wanted to do, but he finally picked one and formulated a plan.

Booting up his HUD, he retrieved the odd-looking rocket-propelled explosive and gave it a scan, rendering an easy schematic he could manipulate. The device assembled a components list from the schematic, making a list of all the materials he would need to replicate them on his 3D printer. "If I can modify these warheads a bit with a stronger motor, and build a firing mechanism into the Zero, we could give Saito some serious punching power on hardened structures. The auto-cannon's high explosive shells are useful for stopping soft targets, but they aren't very useful for lasting structural damage. With a rack of six or eight warheads mounted onto the wings, he could engage airships at critical points like the keel and do serious damage." Tails thought. He severed the schematic for the motor from the warhead and began upsizing it, to see if it would be feasible to simply upscale the existing model. The upscaled motor worked relatively well in a digital test, only showing possible stress fractures in the plastic motor casing due to overpressure. "Not that it matters, since it will have already left the plane if there’s a malfunction…" Tails muttered to himself.

"Did you say something, Mr. Miles? Ilococoo asked.

Tails shook his head. "Nothing, sorry to disturb you. I talk to myself while I work sometimes," he said, looking back at the two women. Tabitha was already sound asleep, lulled by the rhythmic tapping of the dartboard. Tails motioned to Ilococoo for her to be quiet before returning to his work, not wanting to disturb Tabitha's sleep.

With Ilcocoo and Tabitha taken care of, he turned his attention to the other hand grenades he had brought from the underground vault, reading the text that was printed on each of their casings. "M84 Concussion… M18 Smoke, White… AN-14 emergency incendiary," Tails muttered, reading the text to himself. “That’s probably thermite, I bet.”.

One particular grenade caught his eye, having a weird design and small text. It's small bulbous body took up most of his hand, with a large white metal dome covering the pull-safety. "Some weird half-english half-symbols writing, no clue about that one," he thought, gently spinning it in his hand to get a full view. "These cross-sections on the outer body make it look like an offensive fragmentation grenade. That one deserves more attention, I suppose."

He placed the frag grenade on the table and scanned it with his HUD device. Detailed schematics revealed an impact-fused explosive, as well as the pull-pin safety mechanism. There was a timed safety as well, that would cause the explosives to ignite if the grenade didn't strike a sufficiently hard surface in time.

"Interesting,” he thought, scratching his chin. “Increasing the timer and payload on these could make for an unusual cluster munition, in a jury-rigged bomb bay for the Zero. Might slow it down too much, though, if I'm adding rocket pods as well…"

Tails labored away at the various grenades, scanning and compiling an ingredients list for each. After finally completing all four grenades, he decided to call it quits for the night. Ilococoo had long since fallen asleep in the hammock with Tabitha, cuddling up with her younger master. He quietly kicked off his shoes and tiptoed over, taking the book off of Tabitha's chest, and retreated to the X Tornado. As quietly as he could, he popped the rear canopy to the passenger seats and shut himself in, wirelessly dimming the lights with his wristcomm. Sleep came to the fox quickly and easily, ensconced in the familiar feels and smells of his X Tornado once more…


	43. Season 2 Chapter 9

**SEASON 2 CHAPTER 9**

… Although it didn't feel quite as long as he had hoped. What seemed like hardly an hour later, someone was knocking on the glass of the canopy, trying to wake Tails from his sleep. Tails let out a short groan as he rubbed his eyes, trying to force himself out of the usual morning stupor that plagued people his age. After finally cracking his eyes open, he noticed a dim light emanating from the ladder-space. A dark silhouette was outlined on the canopy, which he assumed was Tabitha knocking on the glass, catching his attention. He popped the canopy manually from the interior latch and turned on the lights remotely, flooding the room with a pale yellow light.

"Morning," he said, yawning.

Tabitha nodded and handed him a plate. Tails took it, noting the contents with interest. "Hey, this looks great! I didn't know any of the students knew how to cook!" The plate held scrambled eggs, toast, and a diced potato.

"Kirche," Tabitha said, walking back to the ladder. Watching her as she left, he noticed Ilococoo was missing, likely back outside as Sylphid once more. Her clothes sat in a pile by the hammock, marking her departure. Tails took a bite into the toast and cringed as the rock-hard bread crumbled in his teeth. He dared to take a bite of the eggs and just about died, grimacing as he forced himself to swallow the yellow mess. "Good god," he thought, holding the plate up to his face, "they look fine! How the hell do you screw up scrambled eggs?"

Hungry, he ate as much as he dared and set the half-empty plate aside, only able to comfortably eat the undercooked yet charred-skin potatoes. "I'm gonna have to teach them how to cook properly so they don't kill me next time,” he grumbled, hopping out of his seat. Careful not to spill any of the leftover food, he dropped down from the Tornado and made his way to the ladder. Kirche was waiting in the upper workshop with Tabitha, sitting on a stool.

"About time you showed up. How was it? I did my best to make it for you, since you were sleeping in for the fight," Kirche stated with pride.

"It was good! I didn't eat much since I didn't want to stuff myself before the fight, but I'd definitely cleared my plate otherwise," Tails said, doing his best to conceal his blatant lie as he tried to hold his stomach together. She seemed to buy it, taking the plate from him.

"Anyways, Julio is outside already, ready whenever you are. Saito is almost ready as well, just eating what I prepared for him as well.

"Ok. I'm going to go check on him and make sure he's good to go," Tails said. He collected Ring from the workbench and walked out of the workshop toward Louise's dorm, beginning to sprint as soon as he was out of sight of the workshop. He hurtled up the stairs, slamming Louise's door open as soon as he reached it, but it was too late. Saito was sprawled out on Louise's bed, a half-empty plate of Kirche's food sitting next to him. Louise was trying to shake him awake, but he was out cold.

"Tails, what the hell is this? Did you do this to Saito?!" Louise asked, more worried than furious.

"No, it was Kirche. Either she's a whole new breed of chef that can disguise the inedible as edible, or it was poisoned," Tails said. Suddenly, a wave of nausea hit him, almost causing him to unload his stomach. He doubled over, gritting his teeth against the biting pain in his stomach.

"Could it be food poisoning? Was there anything that could've been raw?" Louise asked, eyes darting frantically between the two. Tails managed to compose himself for about thirty seconds, long enough to make it onto a chair.

"No way in hell… this is food… poisoning. Not even… cholera… does this," Tails managed between short breaths. Louise brought him a glass of water that had been brought up with the meal, but Tails rejected it. "It might be… poisoned too."

Someone knocked gently on the door. Louise gave the OK for the person to come in as she tended to Saito, sitting him up. Kirche and Tabitha entered, shutting the door behind them.

"What's wrong with them?" Kirche asked, surveying the damage. Tails was now head-down on a table, trying to stay comfortable as the pain passed. Saito wasn't looking too much better, with Louise by his side on the bed.

"We think the food you gave them was poisoned. Do you know anything about it?" Louise asked.

"No clue," Kirche stated, lost in thought. "I brought it up to them as soon as I finished making it, so it would have had to have been magic-based unless someone tainted the ingredients beforehand."

"You sure it wasn't your own awful cooking?" Louise retorted, rage building in her eyes.

Kirche drew her wand in anger, but hesitated and put it away. "Really, Louise, you’re that narrow-minded? Julio may be cute, but that’s no excuse to poison my own familiar. No, I'm sure I followed the same instructions I saw Marteau follow one morning. It looked right, so I assume it was good. Anyways, we need them back in action! Julio's good to go outside, and is waiting on them. He's way early, but all the other girls want him to start!"

Tabitha stepped forward to Tails and raised her staff, chanting a short spell. Slowly, Tails sat upright, rubbing his face. "Dang, I feel like I could take a nap for a year," he said, letting out a short yawn. "But I'm feeling fine otherwise, so that's a plus."

"Tabitha, do that again for Saito, please!" Louise blurted. "I don't want that smug bastard Julio winning, not after trying to cheat."

Tabitha nodded and repeated the process for Saito, bringing him back to reality. He looked around the room drowsily, taking in his surroundings. "Wha happpmned?" he mumbled.

"Great, it's like he didn't even wake up this morning," Louise stated in frustration. She gave him a vicious slap on the face, bringing him to attention. "Wake up, you idiot! I need you to go fight Julio now!"

Saito raised his hand to his face, nursing the injury. "Alright, alright…" he mumbled. He stumbled out of bed and tried to collect Derflinger, but Kirche beat him to it, keeping Derf away from him.

"You aren't trying to kill him, idiot!" she yelled. "You're using training swords. They're already down there, so get going!"

Saito meandered out into the hallway, slowly making his way downstairs as the other four waited behind in Louise's room for a moment.

"Kirche, whose side are you on?" Louise said as she began changing into day clothes. "I don't care if he kills that smug prick, so let him take Derf if it gives him the advantage."

Kirche had no response to this, simply standing silently with her back turned. When Louise finished dressing, the four made their way downstairs into the field, where the horde of schoolgirls stood surrounding the two combatants. The sound of the two wooden blades whacking together sporadically punctured the air over the cheers of the girls. Louise pushed her way to the front of the group, adding her rally cries to the din. Tails, Tabitha, and Kirche pushed their way into the crowd on the opposite side of the ring, getting a front-row view of the match.

Saito was breathing deeply, a light sheen of sweat already breaking out on his head. Julio, however, was totally clean, his breathing almost imperceptible. Saito made a quick lunge, but cut his thrust short in an attempt to cause Julio to overswing in the counter. Julio read his move and tried to disarm Saito by twisting his blade, but Saito was able to move his blade in time. The two rushed past each other as both moves failed, placing them back on opposing sides of the ring.

"They're relatively balanced in skill! That's a surprise. I would think Saito would have the advantage, since priests aren't supposed to be combatants," Kirche noted.

Tails frowned, unhappy with the situation. "There's no way this guy isn't a fighter, based on his skill. That means he's gonna have at least equal endurance to Saito at his best, but Saito ISN'T at his best. He's still tired from expelling the poison, so he needs to end this fast before he runs out of strength."

Saito rushed again, this time catching Julio in a head-on clash, blades crossed. The two went at each other in a test of raw strength, seeing who could overcome the other. Julio gained a bit of ground at the beginning, but Saito managed to force him to backpedal a bit after getting a more solid grip on his own sword. Saito managed to disconnect from Julio by pushing him back on his heels, giving him an opportunity to continue a rush while Julio reeled backwards.

Julio expected this, performing a dazzling acrobatic backflip as Saito continued forward under his own momentum. The clack of two wooden blades resounded across the field, followed by a whizzing sound over Tails' head. He heard a blade contact the stone perimeter wall behind him, but didn't even bother to stop and look, surprised by the outcome of the clash. Saito had performed some acrobatic move of his own that Tails had missed, positioning him behind Julio and allowing him to catch Julio's sword by the handguard and rip it from his hands. Julio raised his hands in defeat as the girls around them cried out.

"Well played, Saito," Julio stated. "I hadn't expected such a move, catching my blade as I maneuvered away. Very efficient."

"I learn as I go, I suppose," Saito retorted. "Are you sure you want to fight Tails, too? He's even better than I am. He beat Agnès in training last night."

Julio swept his hair, collecting himself. "Now that I'm warmed up, of course. But first, I'd imagine you owe Louise a kiss!" he said, glancing over to Louise. Her face flared a bright red in embarrassment, refusing to make eye contact with either of the boys. The girls around them breathed a sigh of relief, thankful that Louise wouldn't be stealing Julio's kiss.

Stepping forward, Louise pulled Saito aside, talking to him privately away from the group. Saito started walking off alone toward Louise's dorm tower, but Louise took off after him, leaving the group of students behind.

"Well then, Miles. Or should I call you Tails, as Saito did?" Julio asked, catching the now-silent group's attention.

"Either will do," Tails said, stepping forward to retrieve the sword Saito had left behind. Julio made his way out of the ring of students to collect his launched sword, giving it a few test swings to ensure it was physically sound. The group of students spread out, leaving plenty of space for the combatants – they had heard of what Tails had done to some students earlier in the year. With any luck, they would be in for a spectacular show.

Tails took a ready stance, giving his sword a few test swings with his left hand. He felt a tap on his shoulder and turned to see Tabitha standing behind him.

"Don't lose," she said, her gaze as emotionless as ever. By the tone of her voice, Tails knew she meant business, though.

He gave her a short thumbs-up. "I've got this. If a physically-drained Saito can handle him, so can I."

Julio took a few steps forward, cautiously closing the distance as Tails waited. Tails halted his advance with a quick, weak stab, forcing Julio to take a step back. Julio returned the favor with a thrust of his own, which Tails batted aside without losing ground. Everything suddenly devolved into a blur of movement, with slashes and blocks being thrown out with ease by the two combatants. Tails took a moment to back off from Julio, switching his sword to his right hand.

"Giving me a handicap, are you? That's not terribly fair," Julio said between breaths.

"Hate to break it to you," Tails joked, "…But I’ve practiced with both hands. I’m a rightey, so if anything, I started you with the handicap."

The two came back together in a clash, the sound of clacking wood accenting the oohs and ahhs of the crowd with frightening intensity. Tails finally managed to knock Julio backwards with a sword-to-sword push, causing Julio to temporarily stumble. Tails seized on the opportunity by lobbing his sword blade-over-hilt at Julio, dead-on accurate toward his stomach. To Tails' surprise this time, Julio seemingly instantly recovered from his rearward momentum, sliding to the side out of the path of the whizzing blade. The sword clattered against the stone, snapping a section of the handguard off of the sword.

"Seems you've given up Tabitha for nothing, after all that. Disarming yourself for an opportunity at a ranged finish? Risky move," Julio lectured, regaining his composition.

"What, you think throwing away my sword is going to stop me? You don't know me at all, do you?" Tails remarked, shaking his head. He tapped a few buttons on his wristcomm, cycling through the rocket shoes menu until he found the option he wanted. His shoes spat out two Power Rings out of the heels that he quickly scooped up. "I'll need to replace these later if I want my rocket shoes to work again, but I shouldn't need them for now," Tails thought to himself. Gripping the rings tight until they disappeared in a flash, a bright yellow aura of the Power Rings’ energy enveloped him. "I'm still in until you stop me. Keep it up, and you might just win her, Jules!"

Julio ran forward, sword low and ready. Tails was able to dodge a low swipe by ducking, then jumping over a low stab, evading swing after stab after swing.

"I can't *HNNG* believe *HNNG* you want *HNNG* Tabitha so badly, Miles!" Julio got out between swings. Tails was effortlessly dodging everything Julio threw at him, abusing his newfound energy in allowing himself to be chased around the courtyard. "It's nothing special, Julio. She's my master, after all, and a friend."

Julio took a few steps back, taking some time to get his breath back. "That's right, you already have someone! A little birdie told me you already have a girlfriend from where you come from! Or should I say, had, before you killed her. You poor monster, killing your own true love!"

A tinge of purple tainted Tails' golden aura, his right hand twitching with a surge of anger. "Gotcha!" Julio called as he charged Tails, hoping to take advantage of the mental confusion he intended to cause. He led with a diagonal swing from his top-right, intending to catch Tails by the neck, but Tails simply reached out and grabbed the blade. His ring-fueled strength stopped the blade cold, locking it in place no matter how Julio struggled to dislodge it. With a quick twist of his wrist, he snapped the blade in two, holding the severed tip at Julio's throat.

"This time, I won't miss, you ugly son of a…" Tails growled. He used half of his remaining Ring energy to deliver a solid center-mass punch, sending Julio flying past one of the girls at the edge of the field, sprawled out against the stone of the central tower. Gripping the broken wooden blade tightly, Tails hurled the chunk of wood at Julio, impacting the wall next to his head with such force that it exploded into matchstick fragments like a grenade.

Having used up all of his Power Ring energy, the purple and yellow aura collapsed in upon itself, bringing with it a wave of fatigue. Tails staggered for a moment under the sudden weight, slowly making his way over to the fallen boy.

Julio raised his right hand to protect his face, expecting another deadly blow, but was surprised when the fox offered his hand to him. "Come on, let's get you fixed up. No sense in letting those cuts get infected or anything,” Tails said. The boy tentatively took his hand, rising to his feet. Leaving the stunned crowd of students behind, the two silently made their way to the infirmary, with Kirche and Tabitha close behind.


	44. Season 2 Chapter 10

**SEASON 2 CHAPTER 10**

"I'm surprised you two didn't kill each other!" the nurse said, doting over the handsome blond man. She was busy wiping Julio's face with a cloth damp with rubbing alcohol, to sterilize the many cuts from the flying splinters of the exploded practice sword. "These cuts were surprisingly deep, for pieces of wood. I'm surprised you didn't go blind. Not to mention a fractured sternum from that punch."

Julio was holding together quite well, not showing any signs of pain despite the searing burn of the alcohol Tails knew he was feeling. When the nurse finished up, she turned her attentions to Tails, almost instantly assessing the issue by his body language, like a grandmother with a crying grandson.

"Your hand was broken from that punch, wasn't it? We'll get that fixed up right quick. Give me one moment, I'll fetch a potion that'll make the heal quick and painless." The nurse disappeared down the hall, leaving the two boys alone in the infirmary.

"By the way," Tails began. "I never had the chance to ask. How did you know about Cosmo?"

"So that's her name? Cosmo. Has a nice air to it. I can guess why you liked her," Julio stated, laying back against the headboard of his infirmary bed.

"You talk bad about her again and I'll flip your bed on top of you."

"Fine, fine. As to your question, it's part of my powers as a Familiar. Control over animals, any non-human beast. I was able to temporarily take control of you and read your mind while you slept last night. If you probably felt like you didn't get much sleep last night, it was because I was controlling your body, so you lost your sense of time. I'm also the familiar of a void mage, as you and Saito are."

Tails was shocked. "Wait, you're telling me Saito isn't the only human? I mean, technically, there's… never mind. Who's your master then?"

"The head of the Romalian Church, Pope Vittorio. He's also a void mage, as is Louise. Excuse my hostilities during the duel, I was simply looking to test the strength of my two new partners."

"Waaaait a second, partners? Whats this pope guy having you do here?" Tails asked, confused. "Does it have to do with the war with Albion?"

"Yes, precisely," Julio stated. "We can't have our new Void mage, Louise, dying in the war. With the men of the Academy away at war, Louise becomes vulnerable to attack. If someone wanted Louise dead, now would be the opportune time, so we must ensure her safety. The nurse is about to return, we will talk later."

Right on cue, the nurse entered the infirmary with two small vials of blue liquid in hand. She uncorked the tops of each and gently handed one to both boys.

"Drink up, and you two will be better in no time. I have other clerical duties to attend to, so if you would excuse me," the nurse stated, quickly evacuating the room.

Tails and Julio looked at each other for a moment, almost unanimously thinking the same thought.

"A toast to good health, I suppose?" Julio asked, holding out his vial.

"If this stuff's better than the food you poisoned, then yeah, to good health!"

The two boys touched glasses gently, then downed the syrupy liquid, emptying the glass to the last drop. "By the way, what poisoned food were you talking about?" Julio asked.

"What, you're telling me that wasn't you trying to get an upper hand?" Tails asked in return.

Julio shook his head. "I have no idea what you are talking about. Miss Kirche brought me some food this morning, but I didn't end up eating any because I figured I would eat after the match. If the food you are referencing to is of the same origin, then we have our culprit."

"Well, Kirche's my third master, so I don't think she'd do it to me intentionally, unless she wanted you to win. Definitely a possibility, although she did say otherwise… anyway, be happy you didn't eat any of it. It was so bad I thought I had salmonella, I was dying after eating half a plate of that stuff. The worst part was, it all looked… normal!" Tails joked halfheartedly.

"Yes, well… it seems we should steer clear of Miss Kirche's cooking, then," Julio concluded.

The two got out of their beds, having given the potions plenty of time to work. Tails gave his hand a massage, probing for any broken bones. When he was satisfied that the potion had worked, he made his way down to the dining hall to fetch some food. Someone had gone through the works of preparing a variety of cold sandwiches for lunch, although many kinds were already almost gone thanks to the ravenous students. As soon as Julio entered the room, many of the girls rushed to his side and began pestering him with questions, giving Tails the stinkeye in the meantime. The fox worked his way along an empty section of a table, collecting a variety of sandwiches to take back to his workshop. He didn't get far before a few girls interrupted him, harassing him with snide remarks about his victory.

"You clearly cheated with that aura of yours!"

"He won because you disarmed yourself! Don't be a sore loser and accept it."

"Julio's a better swordsman than you!"

Tails let them continue, ignoring their remarks as long as he could tolerate as he gathered his lunch. Finally, the girls reached a tipping point was reached when one of them made a move for his plate of food. He gently set the plate down out of her reach, pushing her back with his tail. "Please don't reach for my food like that, I don't want to spill it on you. Why are you guys so upset?” he asked, an edge of frustration in his voice. “If I had lost, Julio would be kissing Tabitha, not you. I don't see why it concerns you so much."

"You hurt his pride!" one of the girls said, getting pushy again. Tails picked up his plate and continued.

"I dunno, he seemed fine to me," Tails pointed out. "We were making toasts to good health over potions and swapping personal info, so he seemed pretty friendly to me."

The girls confided among themselves, then wandered off back to Julio's fangroup, leaving Tails to himself. He finished arranging his plate and made his way back outside. On his way back to the workshop, he noticed a group of magicians outside the front gate and down the road a ways; his attention, however, was focused on Saito’s Zero hovering over their heads as they walked. He rushed over to the gateway, waiting anxiously until the magicians had reached him, using their magic to hoist the plane over the stone archway and into the grass inside the perimeter wall.

Quickly thanking the mages for delivering the craft, Tails set his plate of sandwiches on the wing of the plane and fetched his HUD device from his workshop, happily setting into his work immediately. Within an hour, he had a detailed list of everything that would need repairs, very few of which were electronics-based.

"I can probably go ahead and install those rocket pods while I'm at it. Maybe the bomb bay too," he thought, surveying the schematic on his HUD device. He tried messing around with the internals of the plane in the rear fuselage area, but was unable to clear a satisfactory space. "There's just too many crucial internals to move around. Looks like that'll have to be externally-mounted as well, if at all."

Tails walked back to his workshop to fetch his tools, then began work on the plane with the materials he had on hand. He was able to re-paint water-damaged panels with some basic dye he had borrowed, as well as re-oil the landing gear and armaments that had lost their grease from the rain and lakewater. The propeller was slightly scuffed up at two blade tips that had rubbed against the lake’s stony bottom during the landing, but with a bit of heating from his T-Buster's plasma cutter, he was able to fix up the damage, touching up the damaged paint. Satisfied with the day's work, he returned his tools to the workshop and sat down at his workbench to doodle away on his HUD with a small built-in stylus, cranking out a variety of schematics for a firing mechanism he could mount onto the plane, working away contently…

* * *

 

Tails finished up his work for the day after rounding out a few separate ideas, unsure of which one to pick for production. He decided to step outside for some fresh air, having been cooped up in the workshop for a while. He grabbed Ring, donned his cross-chest sheath, and stepped outside, closing the door behind him. He let out a long yawn as he stretched, enjoying the warmth of the sun after being underground for a while.

"Eleanore, wait!" Tails heard a voice call. He noticed a tall blond-haired lady dragging away Siesta and Saito to a carriage outside the gate, pushing Louise in front of her. Louise noticed Tails standing in front of the workshop and perked up, raising her hands to her mouth. "Tails, help stop Eleanore, please!" she called over to him, a note of panic in her voice. He warily jogged over to the woman, not sure whether to stop her or let her drag his friend away. After briefly weighing his choices, he tried stepping out in front of the lady to stop her.

The tall, bespectacled blond-haired lady scowled down at him, nearly kicking him out of the way as she continued on toward the carraige. "Stand down! We are taking Louise home. You have no authority to stop us," she barked.

"I mean, Louise did tell me to…” he replied, unsure of who to listen to. The blond lady, Eleanore as Louise called her, looked surprised, looking back and forth between Saito and Tails. She then let go of Saito and grabbed Louise by the cheek, giving it a vicious tug. "Louise, which one is your familiar? Are you lying to me about this boy?" she ordered, still holding onto the pink-haired girl’s face with an iron grip.

"No, Eleanore. Both of them are my familiar," Louise whimpered, trying to avoid more pain if possible. Without waiting for further explanation, Eleanore snatched up Saito once more and began pushing Tails toward the gate. "Get in the carriage. We're going home, and you're coming with us."

"Hey, I still have work to do here, I can't just leave!" Tails said, trying get around the bossy woman to avoid being pushed into the carriage. With an exasperated sigh, Eleanore tossed Saito and Siesta in and quickly chased Tails and Louise up the steps, shutting the carriage door behind them.

Tails sat quietly in the carriage next to Saito, thoroughly confused as to what's going on. The carriage ride seemed to last an eternity in tense silence, with everyone under threat of Eleanore exploding into a fit should anyone so much as sneeze. It didn't help that Siesta was taking the opportunity, perhaps what she saw as immunity to reprisal from Louise, to make subtle advances on Saito. Louise's face was rose-red with anger, although she didn't dare voice it in Eleanore’s presence.

* * *

 

After what Tails guessed was about two hours of riding, the carriage finally slowed to a stop. The door was opened by the driver, allowing Eleanore to step out first. Louise, Saito, Siesta and Tails shortly followed, stretching to relieve the tension of the long, cramped ride.

"Wow, Louise, your family has one heck of a house!" Saito remarked, looking around the property.

Tails noted a drawbridge over a canal behind him that presumably encircled the entire property, although the property was much too big to see its edge. "Saito, I think this is more in the magnitude of castle than just a house. This thing dwarfs my workshop by a mile, probably still does even if you include the underground hangar," he said, admiring the well-maintained garden work. He could catch the scent of lavender and rosemary from some garden upwind of him, to his right.

"Come along!" Eleanore snapped, marching to the door. A pink-haired lady, looking much like an older, well-endowed version of Louise, stood at the door. The way she wore her hair, with bangs in front of her ears with small cloth wraps to hold it together, reminded Tails a lot of Tikal. He had always seen her photo whenever he had taken the time away from the workshop to visit Knuckles at the Master Emerald shrine, where he kept the photo close at hand.

"Cattleya!" Louise exclaimed, running forward to embrace the woman much to Eleanore’s annoyance. Tails and Saito approached cautiously, looking to avoid stirring up anything between the three siblings.

"It's been too long, Louise," Cattleya said in a gentle voice. "You should come home more often and visit. Who are these two? Friends of yours?"

Louise looked down, slightly ashamed. "They're my familiars. They aren't much, but…"

Eleanore seemingly materialized at Louise’s side, giving her another vicious tug on the cheek. "Why don't you greet me like that, Louise? Respect ALL of your elders, got it?!" she said, almost shouting now.

Saito leaned over to Tails’ ear. “Jeez, that lady's worse than Louise. She's just pissed ALL the time, isn't she?” he whispered. Tails couldn’t help but nod.

Derflinger popped out of his sheath a bit. "No kiddin'. I thought Louise was getting bad, the way she beats on Saito with that crop, but damn! At least we know where Louise gets it from,” he muttered.

Cattleya led the way for the group into the mansion, guiding the newcomers around the major rooms. She then broke off, leaving Eleanore to lead the guests to their room. Every person in the group had their own furnished room, although the furnishings became less and less lustrous as they went. By the time Eleanore had guided Tails and Saito to their rooms, there was only a bed, dresser, window, and a small bedstand and lamp to work with.

"Dinner will be served in a few hours. Don't be late, or you won't be given a seat," she stated, leaving the two to set up their rooms how they liked.

Having nothing to unpack, though, Tails decided to go take a look around the property. He left Ring on the table just inside the doorway and took off down the hall. Pulling up his wristcomm, he tried to engage his rocket boots as he ran, but only succeeded in falling into a skidding faceplant on the carpeted tile floor as they failed to start up.

"Owowowow," Tails mumbled, rubbing his forehead. "Dangit, I forgot to replace the Power Rings in my shoes after that fight." Briefly dusting himself off, he stood up and brought up his T-Buster, removing a Power Ring from the micro-generator’s storage slot. The Power Ring snapped into the jet shoes attachment on his right heel inserted it into the satisfying click. "I'll have to remember to replace the left one later," he thought to himself.

He put away his T-Buster and traced his way back through the mansion to the front door, stepping outside into the fresh afternoon air. With room to move, he spooled up his tails to propel him inches above the ground like he used to for years of chasing his blue hedgehog friend, following the wind to where the source of the floral scents was coming from. Soon, he found himself at a beautiful lakeside garden of roses, tulips, lavender, and many other kinds of flowers bordered by rosemary hedges. A light breeze set the flowers into a lively dance was nothing short of eye candy after so many hours cooped up on the ride there. He got down on his knees in front of a section of low, trimmed rose bushes, gently tugging one flower up to his nose to take a whiff.

"Please don't pick them. They're my favorite, and I'd hate to lose even one," a voice said behind him. Tails let go of the rose and turned to face the newcomer. Cattleya was standing in the shade of a large tree, watching him with curiosity. “She must’ve been here before I was,” he thought.

"Sorry," he said, backing off from the bush. "They just reminded me of a close friend. She used to wear roses in her hair."

"I see. You must miss her, I imagine," Cattleya said, approaching the bush next to Tails.

Tails nodded. "More than anything. Someday she'll be back, I’m sure of it… but it won't be any time soon. Not until I return home myself, at least."

Cattleya knelt down and gave a rose a gentle sniff. "They're wonderful at this time of season here in Tristain. Where is home for you, Mr. Fox?"

Tails was silent. Did Louise not tell her at some point? Perhaps she hadn’t been home, or even written a letter, since he had arrived in this world. Finally, he decided to give it to her straight. "A crazy long distance. Definitely not in this dimension. Possibly not in the next one, if it was a multi-dimensional jump when I was summoned. I have no idea if I will ever be able to return directly, but I'm going to try my best. I can't let my friends down."

"I'm sorry to hear that,” Cattleya said, smiling faintly. "I don't quite understand, but I'm sure that you'll be able to get home someday. What about your friends here?" she asked, gazing over the lake.

Tails pushed the latter question out of his mind, not quite sure how to answer it. "…It'd take some other concepts you wouldn't understand to explain properly, but basically, a dimension is alternate world, by which events happened differently from the very beginning, resulting in different worlds,” he explained. “For example, one of the worlds I’ve been to looks a lot like this one – it even has similar languages. It's only difference is, no magic. All dimensions are connected like a net. Not all dimensions are connected to each other directly, but some connect to lots at once. His connects to this one by wormholes generated by solar eclipses. Mine, I don't know if it's connected to this one at all, at least directly. But if I can go from home to here, like when I was summoned, I can go from here to there. So, once I figure out how to do it, I should be able to go back and forth, so I can stay friends with everyone."

Cattleya stood quietly, scanning the horizon over the lake as she contemplated what Tails had told her. "It seems you have thought things through extremely well, Mr. Fox. I wish you the best of luck in finding your loved one, and in returning home."

"Thanks. I'll need it, for sure," Tails said, gazing over the lake. His eyes caught on a small veranda on the water’s edge. Shielding his eyes from the sun, he could see pink hair fluttering out in the wind from behind one of the small structure’s roof supports.

"She's confused, isn't she?" Cattleya stated rhetorically. "Mother, Father, and Eleanore want to see her married to a noble. Louise claims she doesn't want to because she's become a competent magician and wants to continue at school, but I believe it's an existing love that she's embarrassed to state. Perhaps to another student?"

Tails was thinking, wondering how to best put things without embarrassing Louise. "I would say she's a competent magician, in her own right. It's just not… conventional, I guess. I don’t know about her personal life, so If I had to guess, I think she's just worried about Saito. He still has his mind set on leaving at the next eclipse, like I do. She doesn't want to lose her familiars. If I could tell what my other two masters were thinking half of the time, I'd guess they're thinking the same thing for me, but they're so weird I can never tell. Seriously, I feel like talking to Tabitha is like talking to a wall sometimes, and Kirche’s too busy checking out guys.

Cattleya laughed quietly. "It sounds like you have a good group of friends," she said, controlling her giggling fit. "I suppose that makes sense. Thank you for your time. It was a nice chat."

"Yeah, no problem…" Tails said, trailing off into his own thoughts. He walked around the garden, stopping to smell the variety of aromatic plants that the garden held. He hadn't noticed Cattleya leave until he had explored the entire variety of the garden. The sun was about halfway through it's descent from peak, telling Tails it was probably getting close to dinnertime.

He checked his T-Buster for another Power Ring, inserting it into his other shoe. With both rocket shoes functional, he made short work of the trip back, weaving along the paths and open fields back to the front door of the mansion. Scents of food wafted through the halls, leading Tails to a central dining room that Cattleya showed him earlier. Eleanore, a pink-haired older lady that Tails presumed to be Louise's mother, and Cattleya had already taken a seat. Tails pulled up his own seat and waited patiently for the meal to begin, wandering off into his own thoughts over the family chatter.


	45. Season 2 Chapter 11

**SEASON 2 CHAPTER 11**

Louise and Saito finally made their way to the dining room, taking their seats together. To Tails’ surprise, Siesta took up a position alongside the maids and butlers on the edge of the room, a waiter's tray in hand. A group of kitchen staff brought out individual dishes for each person, retreating to the kitchen as soon as they were finished. Dinner consisted of a seasoned steak and a salad on the side, with wine to drink, which Tails didn't touch. He barely made it through half of his steak before Eleanore exploded, breaking the awkward silence that had fallen over the room as they ate. "Mother, we should contact that nobleman we picked out and arrange the marriage while Louise is home."

"No!" Louise cried. "I'm at the Academy! I can't get married now!"

"Come now, Louise, you've never been good at magic. We all know that," Eleanore stated, still facing her mother.

"Why don't YOU marry that noble if you want a wedding so bad!" Louise retorted, giving Eleanore a death stare. Eleanore quickly returned the favor, looking almost ready to crack Louise over the head with a thrown dinner plate. "You well know why I can't marry him! Respect your elders, you little runt!"

The mother raised her hand, silencing the two. "That's enough. We'll discuss the wedding as soon as your father gets home. It is his matter to deal with."

Cattleya set her silverware down on her plate without a sound. "I think Louise is a fine magician. Mr. Fox confirmed it, and I trust him."

Everyone turned to Tails with a variety of faces ranging from fear, to mild interest, to "I'm gonna string you by your stubby neck and wear you as a coat", the lattermost from Louise herself. "From what I can tell,” he began somewhat nervously, “…she specializes in fire magic, but instead of using consistent flames like, say, Kirche, she combines wind and fire magic by compressing air from the surrounding area to a specific point, increasing combustibility to absurd levels. She then ignites it with a spark of fire magic, creating massive explosions on command," he explained, creating visual representations with his hands. “Just a guess, though.”

"Could you show us, Louise?" her mother asked. This time, it was Saito's turn to react, leaping out of his chair in panic. "If she does it here, she'd kill us all!" he exclaimed, looking over at Louise.

"Very well. When your father gets home, you will demonstrate this magic. If he finds it suitably impressive, you will continue your studies at the Academy. If it fails to pass his test, you will be withdrawn from the Academy and a marriage will be proposed," Louise's mother stated bluntly. Louise exhaled softly, shooting Tails a sidelong glance. He hadn't noticed, however, having gone back to eating his meallike everyone else.

Slowly, members of the dinner retired one by one to their rooms, allowing the servants to clear their dishes after they had left. Although Tails had pretty much finished first, he sat around until he was the last one there. As he rose from his chair, he heard one of the maids clear her throat behind him. He turned to find Siesta waiting to collect his plates.

"Mr. Miles, may I ask you a question?" she asked, rather quietly. She was blushing profusely, but seemed a little excited by the tone of her voice.

"Sure, what is it?" he asked in return.

"Uhh… If you don't mind, I'd… rather ask you in private," she replied.

"Alright. One sec." Tails collected his own plates and took them off to the kitchen, despite the other servant's protest that it was "wrong for guests to deal with their own dishes." Tails ignored them, setting the dishes inside the kitchen adjacent to the dining hall, next to a stack of other dirty dishes. He then allowed Siesta to lead him off back to her room, locking the door behind them.

"So," Tails began, taking a chair. "What did you want to ask?"

Siesta took a seat on her bed and paused for a moment, collecting herself. "Mr. Miles, have you ever… loved someone?"

Tails was slightly taken aback by this question, but at the same time, he also sort of expected the questions to be about love. "Yeah, I guess I’d be lying if I said I haven’t. Before we go any further, is this because you love Saito, and you're afraid Louise does too?"

Siesta's face turned rose-red, and she was unable to hold eye contact with him for a moment. " Yes, that's it," she agreed.

Tails sat back in his chair, pondering how to go about things. "Well, I’m no love doctor, but despite Louise being a noble, I'd say you have a pretty good chance of winning him over. I-"

"You think so?" Siesta interrupted, overjoyed by the news.

"Yeah,” the fox said, nodding. “Louise seems very pushy, very demanding, and, to be honest, a pain to be around. Unless Saito's some sort of masochist, he won't want to hang around her for long. Not to mention that her family may force her to marry, which, if that goes through, will leave Saito open for the taking. Don't expect that to happen though, since she seems pretty dead-set on not being married off. Be careful around Louise, though, because she may have feelings for him all the same."

"Well, I'll do my best to be a better person to Saito than her!" Siesta stated, returning to her normal self. "Besides, I've already beaten her on the physical level…" she added, putting an arm under her breasts.

"Uhh… sure? Anyways, I'd say, don't be afraid to give it your all, or you might lose him," Tails said, standing up out of his chair. He made his way to the door and made it halfway out before Siesta called to him once more.

"Mr. Miles? Thank you for your help!" she said, walking to the door.

"Hey, it's no problem! By the way, just call me Tails. Miles feels a little stuffy at times. I never liked the name, to be honest."

"Alright. Thank you… Tails. Have a good night!" Siesta said, giving him a friendly smile.

"You too," he said, returning the grin. He walked off down the hall to his room as quietly as he could, to avoid waking anyone. He noted that he didn't hear Siesta's door close until he made it down the hall to his own, although he didn't pay it any mind. “Must be headed out to find Saito,” he thought.

As soon as he closed his own door, he kicked off his shoes, threw his gloves on the nightstand and threw himself at the bed, sinking deeply into the plush mattress where he landed. Despite laying on what he considered one of the nicest beds he'd ever had, memory foam excluded, he couldn't seem to fall asleep even after what seemed like a half hour. Bored, he held up his left hand, inspecting the runes that had dyed themselves into the roots of his fur. He lounged around in bed for what felt like an eternity, waiting for sleep to overtake him, but it never came.

Throughout the night, Tails heard what he thought were doors opening and closing, but he just assumed it was Saito going to the bathroom at night. A short, muffled scream shattered Tails' train of thought, sending him flying out of bed. He slammed his door open and darted down the hall, his padded feet sliding as he skidded to a stop in front of Saito's room – the only bedroom near to his that it could have possibly come from. He ripped the door open, T-Buster at the ready and scanning for targets, only to find Siesta and Louise in bed, staring at Tails with a mixture of surprise and fright. As soon as Tails understood what he thought was going on, he stowed his T-Buster and leaned up against the doorframe, chuckling to himself. "Siesta, if you were asking for advice on these things, you were asking the wrong guy," he said, still chuckling. Louise threw a pillow at him, knocking him over.

"I came to see Saito, and found this COW in his place! Most likely trying to get ahold of him and… do things…" she yelled, blushing despite her furious face.

"I wasn't here for that!" Siesta exclaimed, covering herself with a blanket despite her modest pajamas.

"Yeah, RIGHT!" Louise yelled, turning her wrath to Siesta. "With things like THESE, you're never NOT seducing him! Stay away from my familiar!" Louise said, grabbing at Siesta. Disinterested with the action, Tails simply tossed the pillow he now held back in the room, closing the door gently behind him. Since he couldn’t sleep, decided to wander the halls for a bit.

Strolling through the halls for several minutes, he reached another, more ornate door, one that he hadn't been to before. He placed his ear up against the door, hearing a few sounds that indicated some sort of struggle. Curious, he gently opened the door to avoid noise, peering into the darkness. A few shapes were tussling on a bed, and Tails caught sight of Saito's face in the light through the door's opening. Then, he saw Eleanore's blond hair, causing his hair to stand on end "That's a political minefield if I've ever seen one. The fact that he got that far actually impressive," Tails thought, "…but WHY is what I want to ask."

"Tails! Help me!" Saito whispered frantically, careful not to budge his arm from the death grip that was Eleanore. She rolled to the side, pulling Saito over the edge of the bed with iron resolve, mumbling something along the lines of "Come to me, Count…".

Tails snuck in as silently as possible to the bedside, observing the situation. After watching Eleanore's movements and listening to her sleeping conversations, he came to a conclusion. He reached over to Saito and whispered in his ear.

"Your sacrifice won't be in vain. Rest in peace."

He snuck out of the room, laughing under his breath as he left Saito to his inevitable doom. He hadn't even made it back to his room before he heard Eleanore explode, her voice echoing down every hallway. Louise and Siesta emerged from Saito's room at the outburst, both looking exhausted from a brief fight. Finally, when Tails returned to his bed, he flopped down on the bed and shut his eyes, waiting for sleep to take him away.

* * *

 

The next morning, an army of servants swarmed around the mansion, doing a host of cleaning jobs. One accidentally barged into Tails' room, startling him awake.

"Terribly sorry, sir. I had thought this was a storage room and had intended to do some cleaning," the young man said.

"No problem, you're welcome to clean. I need to get up anyways," Tails replied, rolling out of bed, groggily wondering how a servant could have mistaken a bedroom for a cleaning closet. Rubbing his eyes, He worked his way over to the table where he had set his stuff the night before. After slipping on his shoes, gloves, and Ring with his sheath, he made his way out into the halls, watching the servants work over sections of the mansion like locusts. For some reason, the absurd efficiency of the butlers, groundskeepers, and maids fascinated him, watching their every movement.

"They don't waste a single calorie of energy, do they?" Tails said aloud in a low tone.

Ring popped out of his sheath. "No, not really. They get paid to do things right, so the more things they do right, the more they're paid. They more or less race each other to work, since money is a bit tight while the Queen is trying to fund this war. It also is probably based on trying to get work done before it gets too warm out."

Tails nodded in agreement. He worked his way to the dining hall, where he found Louise's mother and a man, presumably her father, discussing things at the table. He started to back out, but was called in by the older man. "Please, come and take a seat," he gestured to a chair opposite his wife, having the end-seat for himself.

Tails took a seat, slightly nervous. "One wrong move and Louise'll be in some serious trouble, which goes for me twice over," he thought to himself.

"So, you're a familiar of Louise's?" the father asked. Nothing about his voice or demeanor suggested he had any intention of dragging on with small talk, like an inquisitor with a purpose. He knew he would need to be on his A-game if he didn’t want to cause problems.

"Yes sir, I am," Tails replied.

"I wanted to thank you for helping defend my daughter in the earlier battles. I heard she went alongside the Queen as a confidant, on the front lines and in harm's way. I'm sure you worked hard to defend her."

"Well… Yes, but she certainly pulled her own weight in the war, to say the least. She was very helpful to the Queen, so I think it was more than worth the effort."

"Very well. And the boy? Is he also a familiar? What about the girl?"

"Oh, you mean Saito and Siesta? Saito is also a familiar, but Siesta is just a maid and a friend of ours that Miss Eleanore grabbed on the way out of the Academy."

"I see," the mother said, drawing Tails' attention. "Does the boy, Saito, have any feelings for our Louise?"

Tails broke eye contact and scratched his head, to appear like he was thinking. "No, not that I can think of. He's polite to her, but that's more mandatory than out of any love interest. I believe Saito actually has interests in Siesta, because Siesta is a descendant of a man from Saito's world, giving them a stronger relation. That's my guess anyways. I don't really pry into that kind of stuff."

The two parents nodded in agreement, the mother giving a slight sigh of relief. "That's good to hear," the father stated, staring at Tails. " I don't think we'd be able to stand her falling in love with a commoner, when so much of our legacy is dependent on her marriage."

Tails held a passive face, but couldn’t help shaking his head. "I understand your legacy is important, but are you giving Louise any thought? She's been pretty nervous about the whole deal, from what I’ve been told. She's been very helpful to the Queen, and having Louise marry would mean she loses her closest friend. Not to mention being stuck with someone she may not like, for the sake of mon-"

The father raised his hand, stopping Tails. "This isn't just about money, it's about nobility and the bloodlines. You have no experience with nobility and royalty, so I will forgive your errors for now. Do NOT associate my family with that of money-seeking prostitutes!"

Tails sat back in his chair, slowly calming down. "Sir, with all due respect, I've been close friends with royalty for my entire lifetime. My dad is the head general of the army, and I grew up with a princess teaching me how to read. They taught me all about that kind of stuff, and it still doesn’t mean anything if Louise would just as soon leave behind whoever she marries.”

Louise’s father glared at Tails with a tempered rage, and was just about to open his mouth once more when Louise, Saito, and the two sisters entered the room, cutting him short. With no more time to talk, he sat back in his chair, tweaking his mustache. "We will continue this discussion at another time, Miles," he stated, acknowledging the new arrivals with a nod in their direction. He clapped his hands twice, calling forth an array of kitchen staff wielding platters of food. As Louise and the others took their seats, the waiters graced the table with shining silverware and plates, gently setting the platters of breakfast foods in the center. A single waiter took a set of serving tongs and began to fill everyone's plates, loading them as high as each person indicated. Tails allowed the server only to modestly fill his plate, politely refusing the man's offers to add more. When the waitstaff finally retreated back to the kitchen, everyone began to eat in silence.

By the time Tails was finished, everyone else had moved on to morning tea, chattering away about small things. Finally, Louise dropped the bomb.

"Father, I want to join the war effort to be at Queen Henrietta's side."

Louise's father set down his teacup, giving her a long and hard stare. "No, absolutely not. You are becoming married, and that requires you here. The Queen has many advisors that would be more helpful than you, so leave their job to them."

"But, Father, the Que-," Louise began.

"Enough!" her father roared, slamming his hand down on the table so hard that everyone's teacups shook on their saucers. "You are my daughter. You will do as I say. This is for your own best interests, so act like it!"

Louise was becoming teary-eyed, refusing to look up at her father. She pushed back her chair and took off out of the hall, nearly sprinting at full speed as she slammed shoulder-first through the doors. Without a word, Louise's mother and father stood, having finished their tea, and retreated to their room silently. Eleanore followed suit, obviously embarrassed for Louise's actions in front of her guests due to her blushing yet haughty face.

Cattleya set down her teacup. "Go to Louise, Saito. She hides in a boat by the dock at the pond when she's distressed, ever since she was little. She needs you now, I would imagine."

Saito nodded in thanks and pushed back his chair, dashing out of the hall. Only Tails and Cattleya remained, watching the door and listening for Saito's footsteps as he ran. Tails turned back to face Cattleya, eyeing her curiously as she smiled faintly, taking another sip of her tea.

"You knew, didn’t you?" he asked rhetorically.

"Of course. I talked to Louise last night, and she clammed up, stuttering in her speech. Every sign that she has feelings for him, although she isn't proud of it. She tries to hide it by beating him for every mistake, but ultimately loves him more than anyone. Even her father, I would guess. Will you go to her as well?"

Tails shook his head, stopping to take a sip of his peppermint tea. "No. If Saito also has feelings for Louise, they should have this moment together. I felt the same way with Cosmo, when I found out about what the Metarex did to her. I wanted to be alone with her, to comfort her, even though we knew the situation was as bad as we thought it was."

Cattleya nodded, still smiling. "You're smarter than they give you credit for, Mr. Miles. Thank you for helping Louise, you've been an invaluable assistant to her, I'm sure."

"Well, being split between three masters takes up a lot of my time and patience, but I try to do my best," Tails said. "Anyways, I think I'm going to visit the garden one more time. If the truth reaches her parents, I doubt we'll be coming back here for a while."

Taking a final sip of his tea, he pushed back his chair and left, taking his time to retrace the path to the garden he had first visited. The wind wasn't blowing today, leaving the earthy garden fragrance hanging like a cloud, intense and refreshing. Tails surveyed the landscape, taking in the views for a final time. In the distance, near the veranda he had seen the day before, he saw a small dock with a boat tied up to it. Saito was standing next to the boat, looking down into it. He was too far away for Tails to hear the conversation, but he could guess.. He saw Saito step down into the boat, causing a ripple across the lake's calm surface. The boy disappeared into the small rowboat, laying in the boat for what felt like ages.

Tails plucked a small piece of lavender, giving the small purple blossoms a sniff as he patiently watched. "I bet he's having a good time," he thought to himself.

"Oh yeah, they're kissing all right," Ring said out loud.

Tails broke his gaze away from the boat, watching the ripple of water hit the edge of the lake in front of him. Finally, Saito emerged from the boat, stepping out of the boat with Louise. Tails watched them intently until they disappeared from view, headed back to the mansion. It didn't hit Tails until a solid minute after Saito and Louise disappeared that they were off to tell Louise's father, sending him dashing back to the mansion. By the time he arrived, Louise and Saito were already talking to her father, with Siesta standing at their side. The father was furious, barking commands as a swarm of butlers, armed with swords, came forth to detain them. Saito picked up Louise, his Gandalfr rune glowing brightly, and leaped clear over the heads of the surrounding men with superhuman strength.

"Who is this guy?!" one of the butlers cried. Tails watched Saito sprinting for the mansion’s front gate, a drawbridge that spanned a somewhat small moat. With the butlers closing in on him as well, he broke into a sprint as he spooled up his rocket shoes, skating across the lawn to snatch Siesta as he darted by. He rushed to catch up, pulling up alongside Saito as the four made their way to the gate.

With the sound of clattering iron chains, the drawbridge slowly began to rise. “We can make it, no problem!” Saito said, still watching the rising wooden bridge as he tried to pick up a little more speed. His hopes were quickly dashed when the grass in front of the bridge suddenly parted, spewing forth stone that rapidly formed into an earthen golem ready to defend the bridge.

"Saito, give me your hand!" Tails called, reaching for him. Louise wrapped her arms tight around Saito’s shoulder as he let go of her with one hand to take Tails’ hand. With his tails at full speed, he swerved to the left and kicked off the ground, struggling to clear the moat under the heavy load without a Power Ring. Doing his best to carefully let his friends down without dropping them, he stumbled to the ground and kept on running, looking to get as far away from the mansion as possible.


	46. Season 2 Chapter 12

SEASON 2 CHAPTER 12

After hours spent walking to the nearest town for a carriage ride home, the four finally made it back to the Academy, just in time for lunch. The campus was dead silent as they made their way through the front gate, heading straight for the central broke off and headed for the kitchen while Louise, Tails, and Saito headed for the main dining hall. Kirche was practically waiting in ambush, launching from her chair to embrace Saito and Tails in a warm hug.

"About time you two showed up! We were wondering where you had gotten off too. Louise didn't do anything to you, Tails, did she?" she said, completely ignoring the death stares Louise was giving her. Louise promptly ripped Tails and Saito from her grasp by their shoulders, bringing her face to face with Kirche. "I did nothing of the sort! I'm not that kind of girl!" she replied angrily.

Derflinger popped out of his sheath. "I'd beg to differ!' he stated in his growly voice. Saito promptly stuffed Derf back into his sheath, silencing him out of embarrassment.

"Anyways," Kirche said, "The Academy's been pretty quiet without you guys. You didn't miss much. Lunch is just sandwiches again, since Marteau's gone for the war effort now."

Kirche took her seat again, munching on a half-eaten sandwich. The three took their seat around a half-full central platter and began loading their plates with a variety of fruit and sandwiches. Tails devoured his meal, finishing well ahead of the others to give himself time to get back to work. He headed back to the workshop, relieved to see that Professor Colbert had made up his usual shipment of materials for him to work with.

Tails got to work on his 3D printer, printing out one of his designs he had sketched up for rocket pod launch tubes for the Zero. Setting his printer to work on fabricating six tubes, he began disassembling the RPG-7VL warheads he had borrowed from the underground vault, drawing up a quick-n-dirty blueprint of the weapon thanks to his HUD’s scanning function. Once everything was printed up and assembled, he collected his tools and materials and carried everything out to the Zero, careful not to spill anything in fear of setting off one of the impact-fuzed warheads.

* * *

 

An hour of drilling, bolting, and wiring later, Tails had successfully integrated the six launch tubes to the underside of the wings, just in front of the landing gear's storage position. The rockets fit snugly into the tubes, locking into place with a twisting lock mechanism shared with the original launcher. Tails rubbed his head with the back of his hand, wiping a small bit of sweat away. He sealed the tubes with a disposable rubber cover to keep dust and dirt out of the launchers, content with the day's work.

"Hey Tails, what are those?" Saito called, running over to the plane. "I saw you leave the dining hall early and wanted to see what you were up to."

Tails' eyes lit up. "I just finished a rocket pod modification to your plane. The twenty-millimeter cannon is good for soft targets, but after what I saw with that last fight, this should allow you to directly engage airships," he rattled off, leading Saito around the plane to get a good look. "There are six rockets in all, all activated in sequence by the trigger added onto the stick next to your main cannon. The sequence starts with the inner left-wing rocket and ends with the outer right rocket. You only fire one rocket per trigger pull, and they'll have some drop, so I'll need to find a way to build some sort of sighting device to account for that. If you stick within two hundred meters or so, you should be able to simply aim straight and fire."

Saito squatted down under the wing to get a closer look at the pods, removing a rubber cap to inspect one. "Yeah, this'll do nicely! Great work, Tails!"

Tails was beaming, but Saito continued on. "Apparently, Louise got a job for her and I again, so tomorrow we are going into town. The Queen wants us doing some work, so we are meeting her informant in a bar in town. She suggested you don't come, same reasons as last time."

"Alright, no big deal," Tails said, shrugging. "I have some work I need to get done anyways. When will you be heading out?"

"Probably about midday, just after lunch," Saito replied, patting the wing of the plane. "We'll get set up in the bar by evening to meet the informant, and get the job done as soon as possible."

"Alright," Tails said again, collecting his tools. He hauled the chest back to his workshop alone, leaving Saito by the plane. He noted that Colbert’s workshop was surprisingly neat, more so than he thought he had left it before being dragged away. Dropping down the ladder to his own workspace, he stowed his toolbox back in the Tornado and headed back upstairs. Students were filtering out of the study halls, practice spears in hand as they took formation in the field. Yawning, Tails walked over to the shaded tree by the kitchen and took a seat, stretching out to get comfortable against the stone and grass. He watched patiently as the girls and Julio worked their way through their usual spear drills with the Gunpowder Squadron, watching their moves with an analytical eye.

He heard the sound of footsteps approach from his right. "It’s not really my place to say, but I think they’re getting better" Tails stated aloud, guessing who was coming to visit him.

"Yeah, I'd say so. Not fast enough, though.” Tails glanced to his right, locking eyes with Agnès staring down at him. She took a seat against the wall alongside him, turning her gaze back to the group. "We need to drill them on ranged combat with bows, next. Then we need to work on first aid and basic survival skills. Not enough time, though."

"What's cutting you short on time? It's not like the Queen's going to be deploying female students to the war," Tails commented, scanning the crowd. He caught sight of Kirche, flirting with Julio per usual.

"No, but we have good intel to suggest that Albion will strike soon. They've been amassing a small army on their island. Too small to be a true offensive force, but more like an oversized recon group. We think that their plan is to seize control of a crucial asset and force us into submission."

"What, you think they're going to attack the school? That's pointless, there's nothing here,” Tails replied curously. “Maybe a few magical artifacts, at best. All of the male students are gone, so it's not like they'd be able to eliminate any of the Queen's fighting force."

"Maybe so," Agnès said, cracking her knuckles. "But we need to be ready if they do, and this Academy is the most readily available target for them. I’ve advised the Queen on the matter, but she believes it’s too dangerous to redirect any of her forces away from other locations." Seeing an opportunity, she stood up and walked over to her soldiers, privately relaying instructions to them. As soon as she was done speaking, the two women nodded and took off, quickly returning with barrels of unstrung bows and loaded quivers. "Right, fall in!" Agnès called to the students.

The girls quickly formed their square at-attention formation, facing Agnès and her two assistants. Agnès cleared her throat violently to catch the chattering group's attention. "We'll be drilling you on ranged combat. Normally, we would start by having you learn spear-throwing, since it's an element of what you've already been practicing. However, we have decided to move to archery, due to the inability of our practice spears to be effectively thrown. Pay close attention to the demonstration of stringing your bow. You will then make your way to the targets set up by my squadron and follow instruction on how to utilize your bow. Dismissed!"

The girls broke formation, setting their practice staves on the ground in a pile next to the bins as they collected a bow. The bows were unstrung on one end, horsehair woven string dangling from one end. Beyond the group, Tails could see a few of Agnès' knights setting up bullseye targets made out of painted wood on pole stands simply stabbed into the ground. When all of the girls collected their bows and a quiver of arrows, they made their way over to the stands, jabbering all the while. The soldiers that had set up the targets took two bows of their own and began demonstrating how to string them, having the students take turns doing so to their own bows.

It wasn't long until Tails could hear rapid whacking noises of wood on wood and wood on stone as the girls took turns following the soldiers' instructions, shooting at the targets with varied success. Tails' attention perked at the sound of booming gunshots, noticing Agnès drilling her soldiers on marksmanship on another, more varied set of targets farther across the field. The female shooters took turns clearing course of eight various-sized targets that were moved after each setup, hastily yet methodically reloading their black powder rifles with uncanny deftness. The course ended with a small thrown target that many of the women missed. Only a single blue-haired woman and Agnès herself managed every target with record speed.

Tails, bored with sitting around, stood up and headed over to observe the rifles used by Agnès' soldiers. He walked over to get a closer look as they practiced, taking in the pungent scent of burnt black powder that filled the air. Noticing that there were a few spare rifles and handguns set aside, he curiously picked one up to look over its design. He hardly had ten seconds to look over the crude firing mechanism before one of Agnès' many female soldiers swiped it from him. She was just beginning to set in scolding him when Agnès stepped over and placed a hand on her shoulder, silencing the soldier instantly.

"You want to give it a go, Miles?" Agnès asked. He nodded in agreement, gently taking the rifle back from the soldier. He took a ready position, cocking the large, sturdy hammer back. As soon as Agnès waved her hand to start the drill, Tails pulled the flintlock up to his shoulder and pointed the rifle at the nearest target, hastily taking a sight picture. With a wall of white gunpowder smoke that obscured his vision and percussive boom that nearly knocked him off of his feet, he tossed the unloaded rifle onto the ground, drawing his T-Buster without stopping. Low-charge pulses erupted from the muzzle of the red arm cannon, scorching the face of every target he could see before him through the smoke. When the thrown target took off into the distance, Tails let loose with five quick bolts, scoring three separate hits that exploded the discs, sending shards of clay scattering off into the field beyond the wall. He looked back over his progress, noting the targets marked by a large black burn mark where the bolt impacted the wood. Some were well off-center because the gunsmoke obscuring his view, but no outright misses on any of the stationary targets. Even the first rifle shot he hadn't anticipated landed about two inches left of center, surprising him.

"Very good, Miles! You have some real shooting talent," Agnès commented, impressed with the results.

Tails picked up the rifle he had tossed on the ground and handed it back to the soldier gently, who snatched it from him with a bit of resentment. "Sorry about taking your rifle," he added, heading back to his spot on the wall. He watched patiently until the girls finished up their bow training, then headed off into his workshop to take a nap.

* * *

 

It wasn't long until Tails woke up again, un-dimming the overhead lights with his wristcomm. He rolled out of his hammock and stretched for a moment, regaining sensation to his numb arm he accidentally slept on. Climbing up the ladder, he shut the trapdoor behind him as he left and stepped out of the shed into the evening air. Dinner was already being served, as far as his nose told him. He trekked through the school grounds to the dining hall where the students had taken their seats, pulling up a chair of his own at the end of the table away from the chattering students.

"It's amazing that these people used to despise me for sitting in here to eat dinner not too long ago," Tails thought to himself. He pulled a few of the remaining serving platters to him, using a serving fork to drag a selection of food onto his plate.

Dinner passed silently without anyone to talk to. By the time Tails set down his silverware, the dining hall had already emptied long before. Yawning, Tails hopped up from his seat and headed to Kirche's dorm, not feeling in the mood to spend the night on his hammock. Upon arrival, however, he found Kirche wasn't home yet, much to his surprise. Kicking off his shoes next to the doorframe and taking off Ring’s sheath, he sprawled out on the blanket pile at the foot of her bed that still remained from earlier weeks, collecting dust on the floor.

Despite his best attempts, Tails couldn’t just seem to sleep, so he decided to study the ceiling boards until he could force himself into some shuteye. The door opened, sending light scattering across the ceiling for a brief moment as Kirche stepped into the room with her monstrous fire-spitting salamander pet Flame on her heels. He watched as she groggily flopped down on her bed, not even bothering to undress or tuck in before falling fast asleep. Tails got up from his bed and gently shut the door she had failed to close, making sure not to wake her or Flame with the sound of the closing latch. He sat back down on his bed and went back to perusing his thoughts, but no matter how hard he tried, he couldn't get to sleep. Not that it mattered, as hardly an hour later, Agnès came slamming through the door, dragging him out of bed with an iron grip.

"Aaaah, hey, stop that!" Tails whispered, removing her grip on his shoulder. "What's the matter?"

"There's a thief in the Academy. You remember those rings that Prince Wales and Queen Henrietta had? She's storing them here at the Academy, and someone tried to break in and get them. Osmond wants us in his office, pronto," Agnès stated resolutely. Tails nodded and followed her off through the school, with Kirche following shortly behind.


	47. Season 2 Chapter 13

SEASON 2 CHAPTER 13

Headmaster Osmond was pacing his office floor, occasionally stopping to inspect the damage of the break-in. The safe that had been hiding behind a painting behind his secretary’s desk was blown open, with the door hanging open on one hinge and char marks on the wall surrounding the safe. The contents of the safe were all accounted for, with the exception of the Queen's rings, which worried him. “Any ordinary thief would have taken everything. There was plenty of valuables there that would fetch a high price on the market, so why only the rings?...” he thought.

Three knocks rang out from his office door. He rushed to the door, welcoming in his guests that he had sent for. Tails, Saito, Louise, Kirche, Tabitha, Professor Colbert, Agnès, and a few of her soldiers filed through the doorway and spread out, taking a seat in the available chairs and sofas.

"Thank you for coming at such a late hour," Osmond began. "As you might have been informed, a break-in has occurred, on a personal vault of mine in my office. The objects of the theft were the Ruby of Wind, and the Ruby of Water, rings of Queen Henrietta and the late Prince Wales. However, in anticipating a theft attempt, I used my safe to contain duplicates of the ring."

One of Agnès's soldiers gave a short gasp. Headmaster Osmond turned his attention to her with a face of curiosity. "Is something the matter?"

"No, not at all!" the soldier lady stammered. "I'm just a little shocked that the Queen would want to store something of that nature here of all places. I would figure it would be safer at the Castle, under guard in her personal vaults."

"I see," Headmaster Osmond stated, returning his focus to the whole group. "It was a personal request on behalf of the Queen, so her reasons are unknown to me. However, we have information on the thief's appearance to begin our search. I was here in my office when the assailant broke in, and I managed to hit them on the chest with a magic postage stamp," he said, retrieving a small wooden ink stamp from his desk. "It cannot be erased except by those who casted it, so we will be able to find the culprit if we can locate the mark. I would like your group to search every student and guard on the grounds until the mark-bearer is found. Professor Colbert will stay here with me as we discuss things, while the rest of you are dismissed."

The group of students and soldiers filed out of the room, with Professor Colbert left standing in the center of the room. "Did you need me, Headmaster?" Colbert asked.

"Yes, as a matter of fact, I do. Aside from the fact that it would be inappropriate for an adult to be searching young women in such a way, we must search the room for evidence. This wasn't magic, I believe."

"You're implying that…?" Colbert said, taken aback.

"Yes, I believe so. However, it is better to let the events run their course, in order to be certain."

* * *

 

Tails and Saito worked their way down the halls, looking for their first subject. Julio managed to present himself out of thin air, almost slightly proud to show off his chest whether or not to prove his innocence.

"Alright, Julio, put your shirt back on. You'll be scaring off any of the other people we need to check if you don't." Saito said, hardly stopping to check him.

"I'd think it would make your jobs easier. They seem to like me well enough with my clothes on," Julio commented, eyeing Saito as they walked.

"Well, if you want to take our job, you're welcome to do so at any time," Tails stated with a shrug. "I suppose it shouldn't be as awkward for me, being a Mobian instead of human, but it'd be just as bad for me to be caught with a girl if Louise finds out. She doesn't take those things in to consideration."

"Well, if you are looking for a place to start, I heard that Miss Cattleya and Miss Eleanore Vallière are filling in as temporary assistants, with all of the male staff gone. They arrived last night and have been busy since with Headmaster Osmond."

"You really think it'd be them?" Saito asked. "Yeah, they wanted to keep Louise out of the war, but this has nothing to do with that."

"Maybe it isn't actually them?" Tails proposed. "If I were a well-informed spy, I'd try to pass as the one person who could reasonably come to the school in other's opinions, but wouldn't want to on their own… Louise would think her parents sent them to keep an eye on her, and I'm sure they are close to the Queen if Louise was a childhood friend of hers, so Osmond would be fine with it. It'd be perfect cover, since Eleanore or Cattleya themselves have no real reason to be here, so the thief wouldn’t run into themselves but would have free reign under the watch of Osmond."

"Alright, that's sound thinking!" Julio stated, patting Tails on the shoulder. "I'll leave it to you two to deal with them, while I'll go help Headmaster Osmond if he needs it. Good luck!" With that, Julio turned and strolled back down the hall from where he came.

"Way to throw us under the bus, asshole," Saito muttered. "Alright, I'll take Cattleya, you take Eleanore. Shouldn't be too hard."

"No way! We do rock-paper-scissors for Eleanore. There's no way she'd show us her chest for something like this without flaying us alive, and I don't want to be turned into a rug."

"Fine. Ready?" Saito asked, holding out a fist.

Tails held out his fist to match. "On three. One, two, three!"

Tails extended a flat palm, indicating paper. Saito was extending scissors.

"It was nice knowing you," Saito joked with a grin. He headed off down the hall to look for Cattleya, leaving Tails to himself in the hall.

"Well, I'm pretty sure it can't get any worse, so let's get it over with," Tails muttered to himself. He headed off down the hall, checking doors as he went to ensure they were empty.

Eventually, he stumbled across an occupied room. Peering into the darkness, he could see Eleanore ensconced deeply in the thick sheets of her bed. Tails removed his shoes and silently crept into the room, leaving the door cracked to give him light to work by. He gently unwrapped the sheets as far as he dared, gently reaching for the first button of her nightdress.

Suddenly, a cacophony of barking and mewing erupted from a room down the hall, startling Eleanore from her sleep as she bolted upright in bed, rubbing her eyes and reaching for her glasses. Tails, inspired by the fear of death itself, gritted his teeth and soundlessly bolted for the door as fast as he could, collecting his shoes as he slipped through the doorway. Sprinting down the hallway, he came to an abrupt halt in front of an open door, peeking around the door frame to peer into the darkness. He caught sight of Saito standing in the center of a bedroom, slowly backpedaling from a writhing mass of puppies and kittens on a small hay pile in one corner of the room. Cattleya was sitting up in her bed near the hay pile, watching Saito with a knowing smile. Agnès came running down the hall with a select group of guards in tow, guns at the ready.

"What's going on here?" Agnès asked, catching her breath with her pistol at her side.

"I have no clue. I heard barking and came running, assuming Saito was in danger," Tails said, watching carefully. "To be honest, I'm not sure how much danger he's in, but if it were Eleanore, he'd be dead. So we have that going for us."

Saito quickly got on his knees and began begging for forgiveness, but Cattleya simply gave him a polite dismissive wave. Agnès and her soldiers moved into the room, giving the room a thorough sweep.

"Miss Agnès, they're here!" a voice stated. The dark blue-haired girl approached Agnès and held forth two rings, which Tails saw as holding two large gemstones, purple and light blue respectively. Agnès quickly thrust her flintlock pistol in Cattleya's face, pulling back the hammer to prime the action.

"Miss Cattleya Vallière, I hereby place you under arrest for grand theft!" Agnès stated. Her soldiers surrounded the bed, rifles raised and at the ready as the staccatto clicks of cocked hammers sounded out. Cattleya slowly stood out of bed, allowing herself to be lead away by Agnès and her soldiers to Headmaster Osmond's office. Tails and Saito quickly followed, watching silently as they worked their way through the campus. They found Osmond's office door open when they arrived, walking in without announcing themselves.

"Headmaster Osmond, we have found the rings in the possession of Miss Cattleya Vallière. We believe she is the thief you are looking for."

Headmaster Osmond looked up from his desk, which he had freshly cluttered with vials of liquid and various papers. "Well, I do believe this will be the true test of that. We have discovered a hair left behind by the perpetrator by the safe itself. With this potion," he said, reaching for a vial of viscous blue liquid, "we will be able to determine the perpetrator. This hair, when dropped into the liquid, will fly back to it's owner."

Osmond gently unstoppered the bottle, dropping the hair into the bottle. The hair, once fully submerged in the liquid, began to glow bright blue, jumping out of the bottle at wicked speed. All eyes traced the streak of light as it hurtled around the room, eventually connecting with the back of the blue-haired soldier. Agnès was the first to react, training her aim on the soldier's head.

"Michelle, I thought I trained you better than this," she stated, shaking her head.

"It wasn't me!" Michelle cried, raising a hand.

"I wish we could believe you, Miss Michelle, but the evidence is working against your case," Headmaster Osmond said. "Please reveal the mark, to be sure."

Michelle slowly reached for the neck of her shirt with her raised hand, stretching the neck to reveal a glowing blue seal. As if the world had slowed to a standstill, Tails watched as she drew her handgun, leveling it with Osmond's head. Saito drew Derflinger and brought the blunt back side of the blade down on Michelle's wrist, causing her to drop the handgun. She quickly reached for her sword with her other hand, but Tails leapt into action, sweeping her feet out from under her with a swipe of his tail. As soon as she had fallen, he planted a foot on her back and leaned heavily on it to pin her in place. "Please don’t move. It won’t end well,” Tails said.

"That's enough. She's reacted in an incriminating manner, which is all we need," Headmaster Osmond stated, stoppering the bottle he was still holding. "We suspected it from the beginning that it was one of your soldiers, Miss Agnès, but we wanted to be sure. Thank you for your cooperation."

"What lead you to believe it was one of my soldiers?" Agnès asked, slightly surprised.

"Easy," Tails jumped in. "Aside from the fact that using a magical fire would trip any magic safeties, it wouldn't leave behind any residue if there wasn’t anything to burn, like the metal safe. The only thing left after something being burned with magical fire are the remains of whatever was burned,” Tails said, nodding to the safe. “I noticed it when we were… on a walk, and there were some magical torches. They were close to the wall, but there wasn’t any soot from the flame. Those char marks over there, though, contain unburned black powder. I thought I recognized the smell of burnt powder when I entered, but I thought it was just me after being on the rifle range earlier today, since I didn't take a bath."

"Precisely. Aside from the fact that it was an explosion, which normal Fire magic casters cannot do. Only Louise is capable of a true explosion of a magical nature, so it ruled out the use of magic almost immediately,” Osmond explained. “Her true failure, however, was that she fell for my trap. The rings she had stolen were fakes, and when she realized this, she tried to place the blame of the theft on someone else. To make it a realistic cover, she would have had to place the blame on a fellow soldier who also had skills in chemical compounds. Perhaps a sense of conflicting loyalty prevented this, however?" he added, glancing down at the fallen soldier.

Tails removed his foot from Michelle's head, helping her to her feet at gunpoint from the surrounding soldiers. "If you plan to be robbing a magic academy, you might want to do some research first,” he said with a grin. The lady only replied with a silent, hateful glare.

Agnès' soldiers took Michelle by the shoulder, leading her at gunpoint off to the dungeon. Headmaster Osmond cleared his throat to catch everyone's attention. "A fantastic job well done, everyone. I will take the fake rings back now, as they should be destroyed to prevent confusion."

Agnès handed the rings back to Osmond gently, to make sure they weren't damaged. Suddenly, the rings began to glow in Osmond's hands, their lights mixing to form a beautiful array of blue and purple through out the dark room.

"Uhh, were the fakes meant to glow like that?" Tails asked, watching closely.

"Well… uhm… Let's just forget this happened, shall we?" Osmond stuttered in embarrassment.

"Wait, these weren’t the fake ones? Which means, you planted the REAL ones in the safe, didn't you?" Saito said, watching the rings intently.

"Perhaps I did too good of a job in replicating them," Colbert professed, rubbing the back of his head. Everyone broke out into laughter, even eliciting a slight grin from Agnès. "You better thank your lucky stars that Michelle didn't decide to run with the fakes, or she would have had the real ones. The Queen would have you dead for that, undoubtedly," she said.

"Agreed," Osmond said, regaining his composition. "Anyways, thank you all for your hard work tonight. It is very late, so I suggest you all head back and get some rest."

Everyone filed out of the office and returned to their respective room. Tails made his way back to Kirche's dorm, where she had already returned to mid-search and fallen asleep. He kicked off his shoes and laid down on his hay pile, letting sleep overtake him once more.


	48. Season 2 Chapter 14

SEASON 2 CHAPTER 14

Tails was uncomfortably hot. He wasn't quite awake, but unable to get back to sleep. He felt warm in all directions, as if he were in some sort of oven or engine room, but without the wonderful smells of fresh cookies or engine grease. He cracked a a single eye open halfway, once again face to face with Kirche, still asleep. Tails could feel her breath rustling his facial fur.

"Eugh, did she… Whew, bad morning breath," Tails thought with a frown, trying to back away. Sitting up, he tried to get out of bed, but realized Kirche had wrapped around his arm in her sleep. Something else had a hold on his left tail, causing him to panic a bit. Careful not to wake Kirche, he slowly leaned over the edge of the bed, finding Flame curled up contentedly around his tail that were draping over the bed, like a cat around a ball of string. Tails slowly wriggled his tail free of Flame's grasp, then managed to free his right arm free from Kirche. He quietly stepped over Flame as he got out of bed, creeping toward the door. Once outside, he silently shut the door behind him and made his way out of the dorm.

Wandering around the school grounds, he noted that the bathtub was still full from some earlier use. Tails tested the water and found it was still rather hot, but that the fire had been extinguished using some of the water. “Must mean Saito’s up and about,” he thought. He kicked off his shoes and hopped in, taking a quick rinse to get the dirt and grease out of his fur as much as possible. Once satisfactorily clean, he hopped out and stirred up a good gust using his tails as propeller, blow-drying himself until his fur was dry and slightly fluffy once more.

"Much better!" Tails thought to himself, pulling his shoes back on. He leaned on the edge of the tub, enjoying the cool morning and slight breeze. A bird flew overhead, perching silently on the perimeter wall a ways away. He felt a light tap on his shoulder and turned to find Tabitha standing next to him. "Oh, hey! Sorry, I didn't hear you walking. How have you been?" he asked.

Tabitha simply stood still, gazing off into the distant sky. Tails noticed that she was holding two books under her arm alongside her staff, one of which was the book he'd given her. "Are you enjoying the book? I told you it'd be a bit dark, but they are still really pretty, if you ask me. Which one are you reading right now?"

Tabitha nodded. "The Snowman," she replied, hardly breaking the morning silence.

"Oh. I don’t remember that one. I didn’t read all of them before giving it to you. Anyways, what have you been up to?" Tails asked, turning to face her properly now.

"Nothing," she replied, still staring at the horizon.  Suddenly, her focus shifted across the lawn, tracking Saito and Louise as they headed to the main gate where a carriage was waiting. "Oh yeah, that reminds me,” Tails added. “The Queen assigned them a new mission, and they invited me. Would you want to come? Books are great, but you should get out once every now and then."

Tabitha thought for a moment, then nodded in agreement. The two walked over to the main gate, catching Louise just before she closed the carriage door. "Hey, Louise, we'd like to take Saito up on his offer and help out with this one. Do you mind?" Tails asked.

Louise thought for a moment, then gave an indifferent shrug. "I'm sure the Queen would be fine with it, but I'm not sure how much help you'd be. You're pretty recognizable, being not human and all."

"Hey, we'll find something to do. Let me go fetch Ring from the workshop and I'll be right there. Tabitha's coming too, by the way."

"Alright, hurry up," Louise said, shutting the door behind her. Tails darted off to his workshop, quickly collecting Ring and a set of NVG's that he stuffed into his satchel of bombs left over from the caving expedition. "Never can be too prepared," he thought to himself. He made his way back out to the carriage, taking his seat on the wooden bench. "Not nearly as plush as Tabitha's carriage, but hey, not everyone's a princess I guess."

"So where are we headed?" Ring said, clanking away.

"I'm not sure yet," Louise began. "We are going to be meeting an informant in town this afternoon, and executing some plan of the Queen’s tonight. Probably another hunt for corrupt noblemen is my guess."

"Sounds like fun," Derf added. Saito went ahead and removed Derf sheath and all from his back, setting him against the wall of the carriage to talk freely. Tails followed suit with Ring, giving him room to lay back without having Ring's pommel jabbed into his gut.

"Fun?!? Dressing up as sexualized waitress wasn't fun at all, especially with that horrendous drunkard noble!" Louise growled. "If we have to do that again, we're finding somewhere else to stay the night."

"Fine, but did you bring any money if that happens?" Saito retorted. Louise clammed up instantly as she hastily searched through her purse, her face flushing bright red. "oh… I guess I didn't… well, crap."

* * *

 

The ride went on for an hour. Throughout the trip Louise and Saito explained what they had done on their previous mission to Tails and Tabitha, in expectation of doing it again. When they finally arrived in town, Louise stepped out of the carriage with a face of disgust. "As I thought, we're back at this stupid bar. Be prepared for the worst," she stated, strolling to the door as slowly as possible, as if to delay the inevitable.

"I don't see what's so bad about it. It's just a bar, right?" Tails said, stepping out of the carriage. He walked over to the front of the bar and pushed the door open gently, peering inside. All around the room, he could see a group of young women in a colorful variety of short-skirted maid's dresses that might have rivaled the contents of that "tasteful" magazine they'd given to Count Mott, cleaning tables and serving customers with massive trays of food and alcohol hoisted over their head. "Hey Louise, you're telling me you had to wear one of those dresses last time you were here?" he asked, nearly in shock.

"Yeah, what about it?" Louise snapped, giving him another angry glance. "You have a problem with me working?"

Tails suppressed his laughter with a round of forced coughing. "No, I'm just surprised you didn't kill anyone. You're so… and wearing those…”

"Yeah, well, we do what we have to to help the Queen, so shut up,” she replied, rolling her eyes to hide her embarrassment. “Head to the back entrance while we go get set up with Scarron. Back entrance is that way," Louise finished, pointing to the left. With a deep breath, she composed herself and strolled in, followed by Saito and Tabitha. Tails took off around into a small side-alley, taking a seat on an upturned wooden milk crate by the door. A few minutes later, the door popped open, revealing a young lady with long black hair and a dirty scullion's apron over a rather plain dress. "Are you Mr. Miles?" she asked.

Tails hopped up from his seat, offering an outstretched hand. "Yep, that's me. Thanks for this, by the way. What's your name?"

The girl took his hand, giving it a quick shake. "Jessica. I work in the kitchen, so I'm the only one that uses this door. You are welcome to come this way to enter and leave whenever you like. I'll show you around."

Tails followed Jessica into a well-lit kitchen filled with all sorts of cooking utensils and a massive wall of liquor. "This is our kitchen and alcohol stock. If you ever need to fetch a bottle of alcohol for a guest, everything is labeled, and the wall is also divided into sections based on alcohol type. Back there is the pantry and coldroom," Jessica added, pointing to a door to the side of the alcohol wall. "Be careful not to slam that door, as you might knock a bottle off of the wall, which is a mess to clean up. Scarron will show you to your room when he gets off of the floor. In the meantime, you can help me and Saito here."

Tails looked around and found Saito hidden behind a massive wooden drying rack, loading freshly cleaned plates into the slots to finish air-drying. "So we're just washing dishes? Simple enough."

"Yup!" Jessica stated. "well, partially, actually. I'll mostly be cooking, so you two are on your own to wash dishes where you can. Tails, if I call you back to my cooking area, it's to pick up a finished dish to take to the counter for one of the waitresses to pick up. You may also need to fetch bottles of wine or other drinks from the rack, so pay close attention to the labels. There's a ladder in the pantry to get to the higher shelves, if you need it. Anyways, good luck!" With that, Jessica returned to the stove, taking up a small stack of paper orders.

Tails started on a stack of dirty dishes left in the sink, scrubbing them down with a soapy rag and rinsing them in a bucket of clean water. He was in the middle of another dish when he heard a small bell ring on the counter. Looking over, Louise was standing in front of the counter with a paper in her hand.

"Grab the bottles listed, and then hand this to Jessica for the food orders," she said, thrusting the paper at Tails. He walked over to the counter and gently took it from her, reading the names on the bottom.  "Great, I can't read half of this!" he thought to himself.

"Alright, give me a sec. I can't read this, so I'll have to match by the name,” he replied. He walked off to the alcohol rack and began scanning the labels, looking for matching writing. Within about three minutes, he was able to locate two of the three bottles listed. "I checked all the lower racks and can't find this one," he thought. "Must be up top."

Making sure the surrounding area was clear, he gave his tails a short wind-up and took off into the air, hovering up to the top level of shelves. After a minute of searching, he finally located a dusty bottle on the top shelf with a matching label, slightly blurred from water-stains and smudged ink. He gently descended to the ground, turning to deliver the bottles to a waiting Louise.

"What the hell are you doing, you idiot!" she hissed, snatching the bottles from him. "If anyone saw you doing that, we'd be screwed for sure!"

"Right, sorry about that," Tails mumbled apologetically. He turned and hiked around the center shelf of the kitchen to the cooking area, clipping the order into a queue of waiting meal orders.

Jessica looked up at the new order, peering at the writing and muttering something under her breath. "I didn't know we'd be hosting a hero tonight!” Jessica stated enthusiastically. "We would have prepared our nicest room if you'd sent a letter ahead."

"No, no, we don't need that," Tails responded, shaking his head. "We're just working here for a bit, so we don't need that kind of attention."

"Alright, well, get back to work I suppose. There'll be more orders coming in, so make sure to get those too."

Tails returned to his sink, picking up some dirty dishes left on the counter on his way. He hardly got through three plates before the bell rang once more, drawing him to the counter. This time, it was Tabitha standing before him, in a light blue serving maid’s dress similar to that of the waiters. Tails raised an eyebrow with a look of questioning surprise. "You're working, Tabitha? You know you don't have to, right?" he asked, taking the paper she offered to him.

She gently shook her head, adjusting her glasses. "Want to."

Tails shrugged, looking over the order. "Alright, suit yourself. Just don't get hurt." He headed back to the shelf, grabbing two bottles from the second lowest row and collecting a dish that Jessica had finished, returning to the counter with a full load. Tabitha took the two bottles and walked off into the crowd, Tails watching her movements to see which table she was serving. Satisfied that she seemed fine, he returned to his dishes and repeated the process of washing and serving.

Two hours later, most of the customers had finally disappeared. Tails was getting a little fidgety, having received no information about the appearance of their informant. As soon as she came up to the counter, he pulled Louise aside, ensuring that no one was close enough overhear. "Anything about this guy we need to be meeting?" he asked, still looking around.

"Nothing. He'll show, I'm sure," Louise replied, scanning the crowd. Suddenly, her face lit up at the appearance of a new customer, taking a seat at a far corner table. "That's Agnès! I saw her face when she walked in. It must be her."

She took off, making sure she was the first to reach Agnès' table before any of the other waiters. Tails watched them intently as they talked, trying to make out what they were saying. However, it was no use, as the mumbling and excited yells of the few remaining drunkards was enough to drown out their muted talk. He saw Louise nod toward the guest and turn toward a door at the back of the dining room near the stairs, followed closely by the hooded figure. “Maybe I should follow them?” He thought as he watched them disappear through the doorway. A few minutes later, Louise and Agnès emerged, followed by a muscular man in a bright purple tank top and navy blue tights, with an absurd amount of cosmetics on his face and a classic spiral mustache. Louise motioned to Saito and Tails for them to follow the group upstairs, heading upstairs herself. Tails managed to catch eye-contact with Tabitha and relay the message before darting for the stairs. He tailed the others into one of the small rooms that lined the singular hallway, followed closely by Tabitha.

"This room and the one immediately next door will be your rooms for the night. I hope you enjoy your stay, and thank you for your work!" the flamboyant man declared. The moment his eyes came to rest on Tails, he flung his arms wide and began his terrifying approach, arms outstretched to wrap Tails in a deep embrace. "You must be Mr. Miles, our other hero! We are so proud to have you here tonight! My name is Mademoiselle Scarron, and I hope you will continue to visit our establishment!" he rattled off, wrapping Tails in a deep choking bear hug.

"ack… Thanks…!" Tails managed, gasping for breath among the aura of women's perfume and intense male B.O. emitting from Scarron. After what seemed like an eternity, he finally released Tails, quickly making his way out of the room back to his customers. Everyone took a seat on the edge of the bed, watching Agnès intently for instructions.

Agnès cleared her throat and began. "Alright. This may come as a shock, but we believe a coup against the Queen is close to launching. Our suspicion is that it's being headed by Lishman, our finance minister. He heads the payroll for the castle, and has been caught multiple times funneling money out of the castle for minor, personal reasons, small matters such as drinking habits – not enough to give him more than a slap on the wrist. We believe that he's doing something big this time, though,” she explained. “He controls the Queen's soldiers' finances, giving him considerable power. Insider soldiers who report directly to the Queen have reported unauthorized docking of pay for quite a while now. We believe he is manipulating the payroll of the soldiers, creating a fake money deficiency to blame the Queen, and thus initiate an armed revolt. Whether he is a spy of Albion forces or not is yet to be determined. For the Queen's safety, we have brought her to a hiding place, hoping that hiding Her Majesty will bring Lishman out of his hole. She will become public again once he is caught. The guards are on high alert on orders of the Castle Guard, as the Queen's disappearance had to be kept a secret for a believable ruse. In the meantime, it has been rumored that Lishman frequents this facility, so we need you to act as our eyes and ears as to his movements when he appears. Understood?"

"Very well. Whatever the Queen needs, we'll be happy to oblige. What does this Lishman fellow look like?" Louise asked.

"You'll know when you see him. Very distinguished fellow, very well dressed, pretty damn ugly if you ask me. Anyways, back to work. I'll be here in this room. Tails, if you see him, make yourself scarce. You’re definitely the most recognizable figure here," Agnès instructed.

Tails grinned. "So I've been told. Yeah, I'll find a way to get upstairs and warn you if I see him, or hide if I can't," he said. With the meeting over, everyone worked their way downstairs one at a time, to keep from arousing suspicion. Finally, Tails was able to return to his work, gathering a handful of dishes to scrub clean.

* * *

 

A few plates later, Tails could hear a short *psst* noise to his right. Suddenly, he felt a hand push him down, cramming him below the counter. He turned to face Saito with a look of questioning. "Is he here?"

"Yeah. Get upstairs as soon as possible, I need to keep working to act like normal. I'll tell you when he isn't looking this way."

Tails crouch-walked to the end of the counter, only a few feet away from the bottom of the stairs. He felt a few rapid taps on his shoulder, sending him into a quick sprint for the stairs, away from prying eyes and toward the bedroom. He opened the door gently to keep the noise down, shutting it behind him.

"Well?' Agnès asked.

"Saito thinks he’s here. I think I caught a glance while I was running. Nice red and gold outfit, sorta fat, blond hair?" Tails asked in return, catching his breath. The description almost reminded him of his favorite villain, minus the baldness.

"Yeah, that's him. Good work. That's about all you can do for now, so take a nap while you can. We'll handle it from here," Agnès offered, indicating to the fresh bed opposite the one she was seated on. Nodding, Tails took a seat and laid back, shutting his eyes and allowing himself to drift off into a light sleep.


	49. Season 2 Chapter 15

Season 2 Chapter 15

Tails woke to the sound of footsteps in the room, gently opening an eye to catch a view of the intruder. He saw Tabitha take a seat on the bed, still dressed in her blue maid outfit, having just gotten off her cleaning shift after closing time. Resting against the bed’s headboard, she silently glanced over at him, nodding in a silent hello. "Heyo,” he replied, rubbing his eyes as he sat up in bed. “How long has Agnès been gone? Is Louise still working?"

Tabitha nodded again, pushing her red-framed glasses up higher on the bridge of her nose.

About to ask another question, Tails paused at the sound of footsteps in the hallway just on the opposite side of the wall from his bed. He heard a door open and shut in the room next door, followed by a few sudden, abrupt thudding noises. He slipped off his shoes and gently crept over to the wall to try and listen in, but was unable to hear anything more than muffled conversation. "The walls are too thick. Good insulation, I suppose," he thought, quietly tiptoeing back to the bed. Laying back on top of the bedsheets, he pulled up his wristcomm to glance at the illuminated screen, reading the time. “I wonder where Louise and Saito are? Maybe they’re talking with Agnès or something…” he thought.

"Well, for one, Saito is next door, talking to the Queen," Ring projected into Tails' mind. "The Queen is asking him for some personal help getting through the guard patrols to the theater down the street a ways, where Agnès and Louise already are."

"Thanks for the heads up. Should I be following them?" Tails thought back, glancing down at his scimitar by the bedside.

"It might be a good idea. If they get caught by guards, it could be an issue."

"Alright," Tails thought, slipping on his shoes as he sat up. "Hey Tabitha, come on, it's time to get going. Get up and get changed," he whispered, setting her staff and bundle of school clothes on the bed in front of her. While she changed behind the door of the room’s ancient, dusty wardrobe, Tails had his right ear affixed to the room’s main door while he strapped Ring to his waist. He could hear the low creak of a nearby door being carefully opened, followed by footsteps down the hall. Glancing back to confirm Tabitha was done changing, he cracked the door open gently, peering out into the hallway. He caught a final sight of Saito and Queen Henrietta, now dressed in an Academy uniform, likely Louise’s borrowed school clothes, walking down the stairs. When they had disappeared into the stairwell, he motioned for Tabitha to follow him as he crept out into the hallway as quietly as possible. Pausing in the stairwell, he waited for the sound of the front door slamming shut before darting to the back door of the kitchen as quickly as possible. The hissing sound of falling rain spattering the stone city roads filled the air as he stepped outside into the back alleyway, shutting the door behind Tabitha.

Tails cautiously crept up to the corner of the building near the street, glancing both ways into the fuzzy darkness of the torchlit street. To his right, he spotted Saito on the sidewalk with Henrietta clutching his arm. “It might be easier to keep an eye on them from the sky,” he muttered to himself. Briefly pointing toward the sky to let Tabitha know his plan, he carefully picked her up and took to the sky with only his tails, watching carefully for anyone who might have their eyes to the sky. He slowly hovered over Saito’s head as close as he dared, following them down the street, the soft swishing noise of his tails filling his ears. Tails could see Saito and the Queen visibly flinch as a patrolling guard unit came into view, obstructing the street ahead of them with a small blockade of soldiers.

"They're going to get caught if they aren't careful," Tails thought to himself. He and Tabitha watched silently as Saito and Henrietta approached the guard unit, clearly unsure of what to do. Saito flinched once more as she clung even tighter to his arm, probably scared, nervous, or both. Tails watched in suspense as the guards watched them pass with suspicion, but decided not to break up the couple. To his relief, the guards continued their patrol, leaving Saito and Henrietta to their devices as they walkd away. Tails released the breath he had been subconsciously holding in, shaking his head with a smile.

"That man's lucky in more ways than one, I suppose,” Ring said in Tails’ mind. “Dodging guards and copping a feel at the same time. Hot damn, Henrietta sure isn’t Louise’s size, let me tell you! I’m jealous.”

“Thanks for the update, perv,” the fox thought, rolling his eyes.

Tails continued to follow the two until they reached a larger, well-lit building with fancy decorations -- presumably the theater Ring had been talking about. He gently lowered himself below the roofline in a side alley, testing a series of windows to see if one would open. Tabitha had just used her staff to unlock the window with a spell, and was beginning to open it when Tails saw the far door begin to open. In a panic, he quickly dropped below the window, not daring to bring himself too close to the window should he be spotted. After a moment of waiting, he decided to slowly hover up to the window, peeking inside. Sitting on a bed in front of a small fireplace inside the dimly lit room, he could see Saito and the Queen talking, with Henrietta resting her head against his shoulder. “I sure hope Louise doesn’t catch him,” he thought.

Suddenly, something at the door startled the two, forcing Tails to hover away from the window once more as Saito and the Queen panicked, looking for somewhere to hide. Tails and Tabitha watched as a beam of light shot through the window as the room’s door was thrown open, only to disappear after a few moments. Delaying just a moment longer, Tails hovered back up to the window, watching as Henrietta held Saito captive with a prolonged kiss. He couldn’t help but laugh as Saito began to panic, likely afraid that the hand of god, or worse, Louise, would strike him down that very instant. Henrietta’s head shot up at the sound of his laughter through the window, her face rose-red.

"I’m glad you didn’t choke him!" Tails said as Tabitha opened the window. Henrietta sat up immediately, eyes wide with shock. Tails gave her a smile, recoiling with hiccups from laughing. "I’ll… forget this ever happened. You might want to fix your shirt, though,” he pointed out.

Henrietta let out an embarrassed yelp as she hastily fumbled to fix her partially-unbuttoned, ill-fitting shirt she’d taken from Louise’s belongings, her hands shaking nervously. She hopped off of the bed and bowed deeply toward Saito. "I'm terribly sorry, Saito! Please forgive me, it was very unladylike!"

Saito sat up, running his hand through his hair. "No big deal, I suppose. It worked, didn't it?"

Lifting Tabitha into the window, Tails grabbed onto the top of the windowframe and swung inside, careful not to whack his tails against the frame. "So, what now?"

"We wait," Henrietta stated, moving closer to the burning fireplace. "The show starts in about an hour. I have Agnès and her squadron in disguise here, ready to arrest him as soon as we have confirmation from his own mouth."

"Good to hear you have this thought out," Saito said, drawing Derflinger and setting him on his lap. "I wouldn't mind having a few swings at him, I suppose."

Tabitha took a seat on the bed and adjusted her glasses, staring patiently at the fire. Tails gave his tails a quick spin, flinging water all over the walls. Removing his damp gloves, he took a seat next to the fireplace, occasionally rotating himself until he was totally dry, his fur warm and fuzzy once more.

Off to the side of the room, he noticed a small, partially stocked bookshelf and decided to take a look at the selection, picking out a small book in Gallician that he could try to read. He sat down next to Tabitha on the bed and cracked it open, reading through the first few chapters as Tabitha silently read along. He could feel her pull one of his tails around her, leaning up against his shoulder as he read.

"Dangit, I just got dry…" Tails thought to himself, feeling the chill of her damp hair, although he didn't dare try to move. The story continued as it depicted a knight, tasked with hosting an ambassador of an enemy kingdom, worked with balancing his reputation as a knight, loyalty to his kingdom, and inner judgement while facing off external pressures. Peasants and fellow nobles were revolting left and right as he attempted to resolve the issue, enthralling Tails with the complexity of social codes. "These people are crazy," he muttered to himself. "Are people here still like this?"

"Sometimes," Tabitha replied. Tails watched her out of the corner of his eye, waiting to flip the page when he thought she was done with the page.

As time passed, the light in the room grew dim as the fire died away. Looking up from the novel, he watched as Saito and the Queen sat together in front of the fire, quietly discussing something. Eventually, the Queen stood up. "We should get going, the show is undoubtedly starting soon."

Tails slipped on his gloves, stood up, and went to replace the book in its place on the shelf. He opened the door and peeked around in the hallway, ensuring that the coast was clear. Satisfied that no one was waiting in ambush, he stepped out of the way to let the other three out, shutting the door behind them.

A thought passed through Tails' mind while they walked. "Miss Henrietta, just curious, were you a student at the Academy once?"

Henrietta flushed red once more, smoothing her already-straight skirt. "I did take some lessons from the Academy for a time, but was privately trained at the castle after only a year of dedicated magic classes, because I had much to learn about running the country. These are Louise's clothes I had to borrow, because my personal dress is too recognizable by the guards, if that’s what you are referring to."

Tails rubbed the back of his head in embarrassment. “Oh yeah, I knew that. I was just curious, after you used magic at the lake...” he said, trailing off upon realizing he might be dredging up bad memories with his question. Henrietta glanced at the ground for a moment, but then back up at the fox with a smile. “No, it’s a reasonable question. All nobles are trained in magic, usually at a school in their nation.”

The four arrived in a central lobby, empty of customers. Tails could hear the applause of a crowd behind a bank of double doors, presumably leading to the main auditorium. "Do you know where Agnès and her soldiers are?" he asked.

"On the first floor, in the center. They'll be in civilian clothes, but I know them all personally, so it should be very easy to find them."

"Alright, well, I'm going to stand by the door in case anything goes down. I don’t want to tip anyone off that we’re here by walking up the aisle. Saito should be able to cover you, though," Tails replied. Saito led Henrietta and Tabitha into the hall during the roaring applause between scenes. Once the audience’s attention had shifted from the open door, he slipped inside and took his position against the doorframe, watching patiently as the play progressed.

The play had no clear plot, and was made even more confusing by the mediocre cast. For a moment, Tails squinted to gain a better look at the female lead on the stage, but he didn't need confirmation to know who it was. "Who in their right mind would pay good money to see Scarron play a female lead? He's a buff bodybuilder that cross-dresses and wears makeup. I'm surprised this drew a crowd at all," he thought.

* * *

 

The play went on for what seemed like ages over some insignificant topic, until the room suddenly exploded into gasps. Agnès' soldiers had stood up, aiming handguns at a central figure in the row in front of them. Raising his hands, the man stood up slowly and faced the group, as if to give up. Suddenly, he leapt backwards from his row clear onto the stage, coming to a gentle landing center stage under the influence of magic. He gave some short monologue that didn't even register with Tails as he drew his T-Buster, lining up a shot, but as soon as Tails was good, the man was gone, an open trapdoor was visible where the man once stood.

The room broke down into chaos as disguised mercenaries all around the two-story theater turned on Agnès' soldiers with a mix of crossbows and pistols drawn, opening fire as soon as they had a clear shot. Taking to the air by his tails, Tails caught sight of Agnès shoving Henrietta below the line of chairs before leaping out into the aisle, making a beeline for the open hatch. He rose to the upper level and began unloading upon the mercenaries with his T-Buster, making short work combatants in the right-side balconies. Dropping to the balcony, wooden fragments flew as pistol shots from the opposite balcony impacted the solid wooden wall, punching splintery holes in his cover. He returned blind fire of his own, confident that only the mercenaries remained in the balcony levels and that no civilian casualties would ensue.

Tails crouch-walked behind the balcony wall, throwing out random shots as he went until he made it to the rear of the seating area closest to the doors, where a connecting balcony linked his position with his enemies'. With a battle cry, he dashed down the hall, engaging the plasma-cutter function of his T-Buster as he came into contact with his first opponent. A portly man with a short saber took a swing at him, but Tails readily cut the blade off of his sword with a swipe of his plasma cutter. Tails let the man run in fear as he proceeded down the hall, hacking and slashing the air to back his fearful opponents into a corner. One man began to aim a loaded pistol at Tails, but with a lightning-quick stroke, the pistol was reduced to nothing but charred wood and molten metal that burned the man’s hands. The mercenaries began to pile up against each other, caught at the end of the balcony seating area as they tried to back away. Before a final stroke to end it, Tails switched back to blaster mode, delivering a final high-voltage shot that arced from one man to the next, electrocuting them into unconscious submission.

"Hey, Tails! You good up there?" Tails could hear Saito call. He looked over the balcony to see a mess of unconscious men and fist-sized shards of ice strewn about the theater. Saito was standing in the middle of it all with Tabitha and Henrietta at his side, wiping his blade clean of some blood. Tails could see a few bodies impaled with icicles, blood mixing with the velvet seats.

"Yeah, I'm fine. I let one guy go, and another guy’s pretty badly burned his hand, but otherwise they're all unconscious and ready for inter-"

A shot rang out, breaking the silence of the now-evacuated theater. Tails could feel a sense of warmth in his stomach, followed by intense shock as he fell to his knees. He looked over into the mass of men, watching a single man in the pile that managed to stay awake after the shock smile with delight as he watched the dreaded yellow kitsune fall. Tails saw the man slip into unconsciousness as his own brain overloaded with thoughts and sensations, feelings of screaming, biting pain and yet bloody, numbing warmth. He looked down and felt his stomach, pulling away his hand to reveal his white glove coated in red blood.

"…I've been shot. Even Shadow couldn't do that…" he thought, before slipping into unconsciousness, screams echoing in the darkness.


	50. Season 2 Chapter 16

**Season 2 Chapter 16**

"Ughh… Dang, I feel like crap," Tails thought. He slowly cracked his eyes open, finding himself staring at a wooden roof instead of the high, arched roof of the theater. "Are we back at the inn?"

Noticing a bright blue light out of the corner of his eye, he glanced to his left. Tabitha was kneeling alongside the bed, her staff glowing with a pale blue light as she silently mumbled some endless incantation. He tried his best to sit up in bed, grimacing at the pain as he pushed himself against the headboard of the bed.

"Don't do that," Saito's voice said, ringing in Tails' ears. "You'll only tear open the wound again. Tabitha's done a great job fixing it up, so don't make it worse."

Rubbing his eyes, he looked around, finding Saito's head sticking through the open doorway. "Saito, couple things,” he said. “Did we get Lishman?"

Saito nodded. "Agnès followed him into the tunnel and stabbed him after he tried to kill her and escape. She's fine. All of the living mercenaries have been taken by royal guards to the dungeon for questioning."

"How long have I been out?"

Saito shrugged. "A bit more than a day now. We'll head back to the Academy as soon as you're feeling better." He turned to leave, but Tails called him back. "By the way, where's Ring?" the fox asked, noticing that his sword wasn’t anywhere nearby.

"End of the bed, here,” Saito said, pointing toward the floor at the foot of the bed. “We're still in the theater guestrooms, by the way."

Tails nodded, shutting his eyes. He enjoyed the relative silence, listening to Tabitha's chant like a meditational rhythm. "Even Shadow couldn't put a bullet in me, back in the day with Cosmo," he thought. "I suppose I relied on myself too much, when the rifle squad could have handled them. That was a stupid mistake, not disarming them after stunning them, and it almost cost me. I need to do better next time. At least no one on our side got hurt."

Tabitha's chant slowed to a halt, her staff returning to its normal brown wooden state. As if the chant were sustaining her, her head gently hit the bedside as soon as she was done, already asleep once more. Tails slowly got out of bed, setting his feet on the floor without a sound. As he began to stand, he almost doubled over in pain from the newfound weight on his lower torso where the bullet wound had been. However, with time, he managed to lift Tabitha into the opposite bed, wincing pain as he laid her out to sleep. He then crawled back into his own bed and tried to fall asleep against the pain, eventually sliding into a deep slumber.

* * *

 

Eventually, Tails woke up again, letting out a prolonged yawn as he stretched his arms and shoulders. To his surprise, Tabitha was back at her chant, bathing the room in a gentle blue glow of her staff once more. The pain had hardly the biting, burning feeling as it had before, now reduced to a gentle throb in his stomach area that grew when he moved. Saito and Louise were also in the room this time, watching him intently.

"Hey guys, I don't know how long this is going to take, but we should get headed back to the Academy now," Tails stated. "I feel much better now, so I think I’ll be fine."

Saito and Louise looked at each other, then back at him. "Fine, but if you need to stop, let us know. You're the one who got shot here," Louise stated. Her unusually sympathetic tone brought a smile to his face. "Thanks, will do," he said. He tapped Tabitha on the shoulder, breaking her concentration and bringing her chant to a stop. "It's time to go."

Tabitha nodded sleepily and stood up, giving Tails room to get out of bed. He slowly rolled out of bed, gingerly standing up in case the pain came back as hard as before. Once he assured himself that everything was fine, he flicked his tails to give them a stretch and and did a couple exercises. He noticed that, although his fur around the wound was still clotted with blood, any missing skin or fur from the wound had since regrown clean and silky smooth, leaving a small bloody ring on his stomach. As he bent over to touch the tops of his feet, the pain in his stomach flared up again, leaving him clutching the bedside to keep from falling over. Saito rushed to help him, but Tails held up his other hand to stop him. “I’m fine,” he lied. “Let’s just go. I’ll be good once we sit down in the carriage.”

Saito stared him down long and hard, then gave an indifferent shrug. "If you say so. It's your body, so don't kill yourself." He put a hand on Tails' shoulder to steady him and picked up Ring from the foot of the bed before helping the fox to the door, leading the group out of the room. Louise gently pushed past the two boys as they exited the theater, flagging down a carriage driver to take them home. Once the driver pulled up at the side of the cobblestone street, Tails climbed up into the carriage, plopping down on the bench against the back wall while Louise instructed the driver. As soon as she stepped in, they were on their way.

Tails leaned up against the back wall of the carriage, trying to get comfortable for the bumpy ride home. Louise and Saito were still patiently watching him, as if they expected him to keel over once more. To his left, Tabitha had fallen asleep against the side wall of the carriage with her staff leaning on her shoulder, hardly breathing.

"Dang, she's knocked out," Tails commented. "How long was she up casting that spell?"

"Ever since you were shot," Louise said in a low tone, turning to the blue-haired girl. "I'm no good with magic other than explosions, so she was the only one that could do it. Normal medicine doesn't work fast enough to stop those kinds of wounds, so a doctor would've been no good."

"Yeah, but I could've sworn I put her to bed after she fell asleep after Saito popped in," Tails recalled.

Saito shook his head. "She got back out of bed about twenty minutes later and kept on, all night. I’m pretty sure she bankrupted the inn of every tea bag they had to stay running on pure caffeine."

Tails watched Tabitha, running the math in his head. "One full day, plus a night, plus a few hours of this morning, minus twenty minutes of sleep… She hasn't slept for at least twenty-eight hours, I'd imagine. Jeez, I owe her big time," he thought to himself.

A small jolt shook the carriage, startling everyone awake and alert. Tails lunged to catch Tabitha’s staff as it began to fall, pulling it to him. "Sorry about that! Just a rock in the road," they could hear the driver call. Sitting upright, Tabitha removed her glasses and rubbed her eyes, bloodshot from a lack of sleep.

"Hey, Tabitha. Here," Tails said, moving one of his tails to his side and tapping it with his hand. "It'll be more comfortable to sleep on than that wooden siding."

Tabitha nodded and laid sideways on the bench, resting her head on his tail. He held her staff in his lap as she slept, admiring the polished craftsmanship of the shaped branch with it's curved head and fine diamond knurl pattern carved into the staff to form a handgrip just below the twin blue bands. “I still never asked her what those dates meant,” he thought, looking over the small numbers carved into the wood. “I’ll need to remember to ask later…”

* * *

 

 The rest of the ride went relatively smoothly, with Tails watching through a small glass window in the side of the carriage as the world crept by. An hour or so later, the carriage arrived at the Academy, devoid of external life as usual. Tails gently roused Tabitha and let her step out of the carriage, handing her the staff he held when he stepped out after her. "What time is it?" Tails asked.

Saito shrugged. "Beats me. I'd guess a little before noon."

Ring slid out of his sheath on Saito's back. "Yeah, he's about dead on. Everyone is in magic class with Colbert in the lecture room, and they're all thinking about food and watching the clock."

Tails stretched out again, giving his tails a quick flick and spin to exercise the sore muscles. All of the joints in his tails popped in a rapid-fire torrent of snapping, reminding him of a child playing with bubble wrap. "Well, I think I’m feeling well enough, so I've got work to do,” he said. “I'll see you guys later. Oh, and Tabitha, thanks a lot for your help. Do me a favor and go take a nap, or you're gonna give yourself a heart attack." Receiving a sleepy nod from his blue-haired friend, Tails jogged off to his workshop, the pain in his gut still spiking with every step. As soon as he was inside the small wooden workshop, he made a beeline for trapdoor and disappeared down into his workshop. He pulled up a stool and took a seat at the workbench, scheming away on his HUD as he lost himself in a flood of ideas he'd been itching to put to paper…

* * *

 

Hours later, Tails finally emerged from his den with a satisfied grin across his face. He felt a little nauseous, having not eaten anything for the day after losing blood earlier, but nothing could quell the good feelings from penning in his signature on another quality design. He made his way to the kitchen and, finding that whoever was tending the kitchen failed to put away a new shipment of food from town, dug out a large dinner roll from the delivery bin. He bit a large chunk out of the baseball-sizedloaf, savoring the crusty bread before swallowing.

"Not as good as anything Marteau could do, but not bad." Tails thought to himself. He found a knife and sliced the roll in half, then fetched some cheese to cut. When he had his sandwich prepared, he brought up his T-Buster, engaged his plasma cutter, and set it to a short half-foot beam on its lowest intensity setting. Slowly waving the thin yellow, pencil-thin beam of energy over the open bread faces for a few minutes yielded a toasty brown layer coated with molten cheese. Pressing the two halves together, he took a bite out of the new sandwich, savoring the crunch of the toasted roll and gooey sharp cheddar core. "Plasma-based power tools really cut down on the cooking time. You would think they would be a kitchen commodity by now," he joked to himself.

He finished off the sandwich and decided to quell the remainder of his appetite with an apple and glass of water. When he was totally done eating and cleaning up, he stepped outside and began heading back to his workshop. However, he was just about to close the door behind him when a voice called his name. Near the front gate of the Academy, he could see Agnès standing next to her horse, tending to the straps of the saddle the long-legged beast wore.

"What's up?" he asked as she jogged over.

"Well, a couple things. To start, I heard you got shot and figured I should check on you, since it was my fault you got caught up in things. Is that it?" Agnès asked, pointing at the bloody ring on Tails' lower-left stomach.

"Yeah, that's where I was shot. Tabitha used a lot of healing magic to close it up. It's still pretty sore, but I'm not dying any faster than normal now, I suppose," Tails joked.

Agnès broke a small grin, but quickly regained her composure. "Anyways, the second thing was that our hunt for Lishman turned out to be a dead end for my own search. I heard that there was a library here that housed sensitive political documents that might help me."

"What are you looking for?" Tails asked. He was a little surprised, and thoroughly curious. He hadn’t heard of anything of that kind of library at the school.

Agnès paused for a moment, considering something. She motioned for him to follow her into the workshop, taking a seat on a stool. "Shut the door," she ordered.

Tails complied, locking the door and checking all of the windows to ensure they were shut. "What's so important that I have to be locking up the workshop to hear?" he asked.

"It's a personal mission of mine,” she replied, watching him intensely. “Most likely something the Queen wouldn't approve of… when I was a child, our village was attacked. Burned to the ground, every bit. All by a single magician. My mission is to find that man. I had believed that Lishman had ordered the attack, but he was only able to redirect me to this library, wherever it is on campus. It's my only remaining lead I have."

Tails nodded. "I'm… sorry to hear that. Well, I don't know of any library like that, but I'm sure Headmaster Osmond knows. There’s… plenty of stuff he keeps secret,” he said, almost letting his tongue slip about the underground vault he’d seen. “Let me know if he says anything. I'll be here"

"Thank you, I will" Agnès said, rising from the stool. She stopped with her hand on the door handle, giving Tails a stern glare. "You tell anyone about this and I'll cut your stubby-ass throat. Slowly." With that, she left.

Tails reached for his neck, as if it were already feeling pain. He let out a yawn, breaking the dull silence of the room. "I need a nap," he thought. "I should probably check on Tabitha, though. Make sure she's not pushing herself too much."

Forcing himself to get back to his feet, he stepped out of the warm afternoon light, walking across the lawn and around the circular campus until he reached Tabitha's dorm. He hiked up through the tower until he reached her room, the door slightly ajar. Quietl poking his head in, he found Kirche sitting on a chair at the end of the bed, watching over Tabitha  as she slept. She gave Tails a silent wave and a smile as he stepped inside, kicking off his shoes.

"Hey. She tried to come to class but fell asleep on her desk," Kirche whispered. Her eyes bulged a little when she saw the small bloody ring on his stomach. "Is that…?" she asked, pointing at his wound.

Tails placed his hand on the spot, tenderly rubbing the spot. "Yeah, long story short, I got shot while on a mission with Louise, for the Queen. Tabitha stayed up all night doing a healing spell to keep me alive. If you want to hear the full details, go bug Louise or Saito. I'd like to take a nap if you don't mind."

Kirche stood up from her chair and walked over to Tails, giving him a hug. "Thank you for helping my friends. I really do owe you."

Tails returned the hug briefly, making sure to keep his distance to not smear his blood all over her shirt. "Hey, they're my friends too. I'd do the same for all of my friends. Thanks for bringing her back here, I'll keep an eye on her for now."

Kirche broke off, making her way to the door. As soon as Tails heard the door latch shut, he turned and began making himself comfortable on his bedsheet pile at the foot of the bed, drifting off into comfortable sleep again.


	51. Season 2 Chapter 17

**SEASON 2 CHAPTER 17**

Tails felt a hand on his shoulder shake him awake, stirring him from his dreamless sleep. Agnès was standing over him, with Saito, Louise, and Professor Colbert standing behind her.

"Hey, Miles, get up. I got permission to go hunt down this library. I figured you would want to see it, since it's underground, apparently."

"Whaaa…" Tails replied sleepily, refusing to wake. "Yeah yeah, sounds like fun. Just a few more minutes of sleep…"

"Now or never, Miles. Miss Tabitha is already awake and waiting on you now."

"Fiiinee…" Tails moaned. He sat up in bed and rubbed his eyes until he was able to force them open. He stood up and gave a quick stretch, forcing himself fully awake. When he was done, the group filed out of the room, headed to the central tower.

"We need to make one more stop to pick up another member of our party. Miss Eleanore is apparently skilled at picking magical locks, so we'll bring her in case we face issues with entry," Agnès stated. The group made their way through the central tower to the dining hall, where Eleanore was ordering Siesta around to do certain chores.

"Miss Eleanore! We are ready to go," Agnès called out.

"Fine. Siesta, come with us. You'll be needed to help us carry books," Eleanore stated. Siesta dropped what she was doing and ran over to the group, coming to a halt by Saito's side.

"Alright, Colbert. Lead the way," Agnès said. Professor Colbert nodded, watching her with a frown. "Right this way."

Professor Colbert led the group again to the base of the stairwell to Headmaster Osmond's office. He reached for a different brick this time, however, pressing gently on a brick in the central pillar of the spiral staircase. The wall disappeared once more, revealing another staircase lit with magical torches. Professor Colbert gestured for the group to enter, shutting the portal behind them. Tails lagged behind the group to talk to Professor Colbert.

"Isn't this leading to the vault that Headmaster Osmond wanted to keep secret?" Tails whispered.

Professor Colbert's eyes lit up. "I'm glad you asked! No, the entrance we just came through is linked to multiple underground chambers, activated by touching different stones. Only Headmaster Osmond, Professor Cheveruse and I have access to them, so knowing which stones to touch would do an intruder no good without us. It also won't open without a conscious magic impulse from us – an intruder could force us to touch the correct stone, but it won't open unless we use magic."

Tails let out a short whistle. "That's pretty complex."

"It's the product of the highest levels of magic. Only a group of the finest magicians could recreate it."

A thought crossed Tails' mind, causing him to freeze in place on the stairs. Professor Colbert looked back at him in curiosity. "Is something the matter?"

Tails resumed walking, processing what he had just heard. "Professor, is that false wall truly teleportation?"

"Yes, it is. Even with the power of all of the magicians involved in building this Academy, it is only capable of short-range teleportation. Less than a mile, I'd guess."

Tails deflated a little, but regained his energy. "Is there any way to improve it's range? How is distance defined in terms of teleportation range?"

Professor Colbert rubbed his bald-topped head in curiosity, as if trying to scratch out an answer. "The magic used for creating these was lost a long time ago. I suppose if it were to be found anywhere, it would be in this library we are visiting. I don't quite understand what you mean by "defining distance", but it's based on literal distance."

"Well, distance measurements in meters don't apply over dimensions," Tails began. "One spot in one dimension is at the exact same spot in another dimension. We might be able to use the portal here to create a path home if it can jump dimensions."

"Interesting. I've never heard of it, you and Saito ARE living proof that it is possible in one method or another. To think of the possibilities!" Professor Colbert began. "Anyways, we are almost there, so I should take the lead."

Professor Colbert headed to the front of the group, leaving Tails behind to catch up with Saito. The stairway gave way to a long, unlit tunnel that echoed with the sounds of water dripping from the ceiling and running down the walls in some places. The air was damp and cold, but it didn't bother Tails in the slightest. From the golden light of the magical flame spewing from Professor Colbert's staff, he noticed Saito was eyeing Siesta closely whenever Louise wasn't watching him. Tracing the boy’s line of sight, he noticed Siesta was wearing a weird uniform, something like but not quite identical to the Academy school uniform.

"Hey Saito," Tails whispered, nudging him with his elbow. "What's with her clothes? That's something from your world, right?"

Saito grinned, giving Tails a thumbs-up. "I found it at a merchant in town. It must have been warped here like that LAW we used. It looks good on her, doesn't it?"

Louise looked back at the two boys with a devilish look in her eye. "And what might you be discussing about Siesta?"

"Nothing!" Saito yelped.

Derf slid out of his sheath a ways, poking up over Saito's shoulder. "Yeah, right,” the enchanted sword said with sarcasm dripping from his voice like water from the ceiling. “You know you didn't buy that outfit for Louise. That requires what she SORELY lacks-”

Saito hastily crammed Derflinger back into his scabbard, but it was too late. "Saaitoooooo!" Louise furiously yelled, whipping out her wand in a frenzied fury. A quick blue flash, and the light of Colbert’s staff disappeared behind a wall of smoke and debris. When the dust had settled, a wall of rubble lay between them and the stairs, blocking the exit they had just exited, with water running over the rocks from the broken tunnel roof.

Eleanore darted over to Louise while no one was looking, grabbing her by the cheek. "NOW LOOK WHAT YOU DID, YOU LITTLE RUNT!" she screamed, raising her hand to slap her little sister across the face repeatedly.

Colbert rested his face in his hand, thinking things over. "Lady Eleanore, please stop!…well, I suppose we press on and get the information we need, first,” he said. “We'll focus on getting out of here when we return."

The group continued down the long cave hallway in total silence the tension between Eleanore, Louise, and everyone else nearly palpable. Tails observed silently, watching light from Professor Colbert's magic flame reflect off the rivulets of water flowing along the walls. It almost gave the cave a crystalline appearance, striking him as rather beautiful. “Maybe a small water fountain to generate some white noise for the workshop would be nice,” he thought.

After a bit of walking, the cave finally opened up into a large chamber. Tails could make out a stone bridge over a massive chasm, with a magical-torch-lit structure built into the wall on the opposite wall. Professor Colbert and Agnès began making their way across the bridge, with the rest of the group following slowly behind. Eleanore and Professor Colbert stood before the door, as if they were reading something written on the door. Eleanore produced a wand similar to Louise's and began chanting a spell, causing some symbol to appear on the door in a glowing blue light. A rumble shook the room momentarily, followed by an audible groan of metal hinges as the door slowly swung open. A wave of sweet, musty air wafted out of the dark room, forcing Tails to take a few steps back from the sheer, smothering strength.

"Well," Professor Colbert said, his voice echoing many times in the library. "Shall we?"

Agnès rushed inside, looking for the first sign of any reference materials to use in her search. In the meantime, everyone else began fanning out through the multitudes of aisles, checking for anything that piqued their interest. On the far left aisles of the monstrous room, Tails perused the older novels on the higher shelves by flying, kicking up a cloud of dust as he went. His eyes widened in surprise as he caught sight of a few titles in English, drawing them from their spot in the crammed bookshelf. He dropped to the floor and took a seat on a stack of unshelved books, taking a look at the covers of his selections and listing them off mentally.

"Let's see… 'How to cook with Bacon'? Useless... Some college physics textbook? Professor Colbert might like that one. I'll save it for him. 'Basic Engine Repair'? Might be good to have Saito use this incase he needs to fix the Zero while I'm busy. An armorer's gunsmithing reference manual? Sorta cool, but I don't need guns with my T-Buster, and Headmaster Osmond didn't want me sharing this kind of stuff. Maybe I'll keep it, just for kicks. Could also be useful if one of the Zero's cannons breaks down."

"I found it!" Tails heard Agnès' voice cry. He quickly slapped his books shut and took off down the aisles, looking up and down the aisles for her. He found her sitting on the lower rungs of a steep ladder, paging through a torn and battered book. Further down, Colbert was busy reading through a book of his own. Tails walked up and took a brief look at Agnès' book, but she gave him a death glare and hid the book’s contents from him. He backed off quickly, spewing apologies.

"Well, if you've gotten what we need, let's leave," Colbert said, shutting his own book. "This place is loaded with magical traps, as per the door's inscription. It's best that we don't accidentally trigger one."

Eleanore's head popped around the far end of the bookshelf. "Are we ready to go yet?" she called.

"No! All of you, shut up for a moment. I'm trying to read!" Agnès yelled. "I'm not leaving this place until I find the answer. It should be in this book, but if it isn't, I'm staying until we find it."

Eleanore gave an indifferent shrug. "Whatever. I will start cleaning up so we can be ready to leave once you find it." She stepped into Agnès' aisle and set her books down, drawing her wand. With a quick flick of her wrist, she levitated the books up to their higher shelves, not bothering to use the ladder this time. With a roaring groan, the library suddenly shook like an earthquake, shaking loose books from higher shelves down into the aisles.

"Miss Eleanore, what did you do?!" Professor Colbert called over the deafening rumbling. "EVERYONE, RUN!"

"No!" Agnès yelled back hardly ten feet away from the man. "I haven't found it yet! It should be here!" She refused to move, bracing herself against the vibrations as she frantically scanned the pages. She flipped the page and continued scanning for what seemed like an eternity, until finally she found it.

"Any luck?" Tails yelled, the vibrations becoming more intense. He could hear crackling wood throughout the library, followed by loud crashes as the ancient, rotting wooden bookshelves began to fall over or simply split apart under the violent shaking.

"It's been torn out!" Agnès yelled back. She looked up at the entrance to see the Professor Colbert, Tabitha, and Eleanore making a dash across the stone bridge.

"RUN!" Agnès called to the fox, sprinting for the entrance. Tails was close behind, books in hand as he used his tails and rocket shoes to quickly pick up speed. For all his speed, he could see Saito, Louise, and Siesta beat him to the entrance, just starting to cross the stone bridge. With a sharp, deafening crack like a gunshot, the stone bridge began to fracture as cracks ran through the stone like lightning. Siesta and Saito had just made it across in time when the bridge collapsed, falling out from under Louise when she was just a meter or so from the edge. Tails pulled out in front of Agnès as he exited the long bookshelf aisle, launching himself into the air over the chasm and coming to a halt to face Agnès. “Come on!” he yelled, waving for her to jump.

“Got it!” she yelled, sprinting for the chasm. With an unfeminine grunt, she threw herself out into the chasm, latching on to Tails’ extended hand.. The recoil of her leap pushed the two clear across the gap, slamming them into the ground on the other side just beyond the shattered, missing bridge. Saito had successfully pulled Louise up with the help of Professor Colbert and was dusting himself off as the group turned to face the two.

Agnès let out a few short hacking coughs, spitting out a bit of dirt. "Thanks for that, Miles. I owe you one."

Tails got to his feet and rubbed his head, checking for cuts from the rocky cave floor. "It was nothing. I'm just glad we made it. Saito, Louise, you two okay?"

Saito gave a thumbs-up, still being clung to by Louise. "Yeah, we're good. She's a little shocked, but we're otherwise fine."

Tails noted that the cacophony of noise had stopped, and that the library door was shut once more. He turned to face the dark cave ahead of them, remembering that the cave was sealed shut ahead as well. The group began walking slowly back into the cave, with Professor Colbert lighting the way again.

"Well, although Agnès didn't find what she was looking for, I'm sure it will turn up somewhere," Siesta offered politely. "Should we get headed home now?"

"Yes, but we'll need a way out," Professor Colbert stated. "The cave was sealed shut."

Everyone simultaneously turned to face Louise, as if to remind her of her guilt. "Hey! It wasn't my fault!" she cried. "Saito was the dog chasing Siesta that angered me, so blame him!"

"Actually, I have an idea," Professor Colbert said with a smile. "Why don't we simply have you blast the rubble away?" Everyone nodded in agreement, but Tails intervened.

"Wait a sec, guys, that's a REALLY bad idea," he began. "See all the water running along the walls here? That means that a water source can't be too far above us. Blasts that strong could cause more collapse, possibly with flooding. I don’t even have any bombs on me, but even if Agnès had black powder on hand, blasting is a bad, bad idea.”

Agnès shook her head. "No-can-do. I knew we wouldn't be in a fight, so I only brought a single shot." The rubble wall came into view just ahead of them, exactly as they had left it. Suddenly, an idea flashed into Tails' head.

"Wait a sec. If we dig the rubble out, we might be able to do it, but that would leave the cave structurally weak. What if we simply carved a new doorway, leaving the rubble in place?"

Professor Colbert gave Tails a quizzical look. "Wouldn't removing only lower sections of rubble cause the upper ones to collapse?"

Tails shook his head with a grin. "Not if we reinforce it. If you use your fire magic to heat it up, and Tabitha with water to cool it, we can reform it into a single solid slab of rock. I can then use my T-Buster's plasma cutter function to carve a new door. Effective, no heavy lifting for anyone, and it could be reused as a defensive measure if you were to add a real door."

Professor Colbert nodded. "A sound plan. Miss Tabitha, do you mind giving me your assistance?"

Tabitha shook her head, planting her staff firmly on the ground. Professor Colbert let loose with a torrent of red flame, heating the loose rubble to a nearly molten state. As soon as it began to melt, Tabitha used her magic to draw water off of the surrounding walls, creating a high-speed torrent of water to soak the heated rubble.

Pushing against the wall of the tunnel, Tails used his spinning tails to clear away the burning-hot steam so they could see what the two magicians were doing. After a few cycles, the wall had taken on a solid, lumpy-looking mass, ready for carving. Tails engaged his T-Buster and began carving away at the stone. When he had completed a large circular cut, he began to push against the wall as hard as he could. With Saito and Professor Colbert to help, the stone budged out of its hole, slamming flat on the ground on the other side of the door. Tabitha gave the still red-hot stone a final douse, waiting for the steam to clear.

"A very good idea, Miles. I will ask Headmaster Osmond to repurpose this stone as a rolling door for re-use. We can leave it here for now," Colbert stated. He continued up the stairs with the group following closely behind, happy to finally leave that dangerous library behind.


	52. Season 2 Chapter 18

**SEASON 2 CHAPTER 18:**

The group re-emerged from the long stairwell, finally back on proper school grounds once more. Everyone looked exhausted, as the well should be. It was almost nighttime now, and the campus grounds were completely empty, as most students had retired for the night.

"Well, I'll see you guys in the morning," Tails said. "I'm gonna go do some studying from these books I grabbed."

"Night," Saito replied with a yawn. Tails broke away from the group and headed for his workshop, not tired in the slightest thanks to his naps earlier. He slipped silently into his workshop and turned on the lights, laying out his books on an open space on his workbench. Deciding on which book to start with, he flipped open the armorer's manual and began reading, quickly scanning through the small-arms sections as he absorbed as much new information as he could. Thoughts swam through his head as he began doodling up a simple sketch of the Zero's armaments, planning out upgrades for a later time as he read…

A few hours had passed, but Tails was still awake, engrossed with disassembling and rebuilding his wristcomm when he heard the upstairs workshop door slam open and shut, followed by the sound of someone locking the door. He heard the trapdoor slam open, then slide shut as whoever it was scrambled down the ladder. He turned to catch sight of the intruder, relieved by the sight of pink hair. She was clearly panicked, stopping to catch her breath at the bottom of the ladder; she also wasn’t wearing her usual school cloak or black stockings, and her shirt buttons were misaligned, like she had been in a rush to get re-dressed to come find him. Tails hopped up from his workbench, walking over to her. “Hey, what’s wrong? Is something going on?” he asked.

"We're under attack!" Louise whispered loudly, clearly afraid that someone would hear her. "Everyone's been rounded up… The only ones that didn't get caught were me, Saito, Professor Colbert, and Agnès. Agnès' soldiers tried to attack, but were defeated by a fire mage that melted their guns and swords. They could kill the Headmaster! Someone was fo-"

A loud slamming noise cut Louise off, causing her to jump in fright. Tails could hear the splintering of wood as the upstairs workshop door was forced open, followed by loud stomping on the wooden floor upstairs. Louise and Tails sat in total silence, watching the trapdoor intently.  "Damn, this was the wrong time to be dismantling my wristcomm. No T-buster without it. I left Ring in Tabitha's room when I was napping, too!”mTails thought, cursing silently to himself.

Despite their utter silence, the intruder found the trap door, flinging it open with a crash. A shirtless, muscular man dropped down through the ladder hole with a grunt, wielding crude tomahawks in each hand with two more hanging from his belt. Without a word, the brute immediately began his attack, lobbing an axe directly for Tails' head. Tails ducked to the left, dragging Louise with him to push her under his workbench as he reached for the nearest weapon -- in this case, a large red-handled monkey wrench. He heard the crash of glass as the tomahawk impacted the front canopy glass of the Tornado, shattering it into thousands of shards.

"I could've sworn I made that stuff bulletproof…" Tails thought to himself. He turned his attention back to the man, who was now advancing on him as he drew another tomahawk. The man made a lunging swing at him, which Tails managed to deflect with a counter-swing of his heavy wrench. Lunging forward under the man’s next swing, Tails caught his opponent’s legs with his tails as his momentum carried him forward, sending the man sprawling to the ground with a quick yank. He seized the opportunity to lash out against the fallen fighter, striking at the man's kneecap with force that shattered bone, inverting his knee. The man howled in pain, which Tails quickly silenced with another swift blow to the head that knocked the invader unconscious. Tails set the bloodied wrench back on his workbench and picked one of the crude tomahawks out of the man's belt, evaluating its weight and size as a suitable, if slightly undersized battleaxe for someone smaller like him. He gave the axe a few test swings, making himself comfortable with the weapon's unbalanced nature.

"Thanks for that," Louise said shakily, crawling out from under the workbench. " I think he was the only one that saw me. They might figure out what happened if he goes missing for too long."

"Yeah. Where are the others that haven't been captured? Are the rest of the grounds safe?" Tails asked.

"The others are in the bushes outside the main tower, strategizing. The grounds should be safe. They only sent a single guard after me when they saw me peeping through a window," Louise replied.

Tails nodded. "Go get them and bring them here. I need to run to Tabitha's room, I left Ring there before we went to the library."

Louise nodded in response, taking off for the ladder. Tails followed behind, stopping at the shattered door of the workshop to check his surroundings. Satisfied that the coast was clear, he dashed around the campus for Tabitha's dorm, flying up the stairs as fast as he could. He reached her room and flung the door open, collecting Ring and fitting the sheath around his waist, stuffing the tomahawks in the waistbelt and securing it tightly. He noticed that Tabitha's pistol was sitting on her nightstand, the two shiny metal magazines glowing softly in the moonlight filtering through her window. He collected the handgun and magazines, racking the slide halfway to check if it was loaded. The yellow shine of a fresh brass casing shined back at him, as well as a full magazine below.

"For once, I'm glad someone left a loaded gun lying around," Tails thought to himself, shaking his head. He stuffed the magazines into the sides of his shoes, the baseplates of the magazines pressing gently into his ankles. He cautiously made his way back to the workshop, only occasionally bothering to check his corners as he came closer to the central building. He stepped gently through the splintered front door of the workshop and dropped down through the trapdoor, finding everyone already waiting for him.

"Well, that's a relief," Professor Colbert said with a sigh. "We thought you might have been captured. We laid out a plan while you were away."

"Alright, sounds good," Tails said. "What do we do?"

Professor Colbert cleared a small space on Tails' workbench, taking a spare piece of paper and a pencil. He sketched up a crude drawing of the interior, with figures labeled with various names. "This is a diagram of what the current state of the interior of the dining hall is like, according to what Miss Vallière saw. The students and other captives are here," he said, pointing at a square Tails presumed was labeled "hostages", "…and there is a blast hole over here, where the Gunpowder Squadron began their assault by blowing a hole in the wall. I had planned to make some distractions that would allow us to take down the guards here, here, and here, before they could recover to their senses. However, I'm not sure if I have enough flash powder for the job, to make the flying distraction bombs…"

Tails walked down to the far end of the workbench, grabbing the green fabric grocery bag he’d taken from Osmond’s vault. "Already ahead of you. I had intended to use these as an offensive modification for Saito's Zero, but they were originally intended for this purpose," he said, drawing a few stick-shaped devices from the bag. "From what I saw of their design, I think these are what you want. These are called 'flashbang' or concussion grenades. Doctor Eggman’s robots used to use these kinds of things a lot, since they work well on people but not robots. They use magnesium-based charges that produce blinding light and a deafening blast that completely disorients anyone near it when it goes off. It has an effective radius of about five feet. We could use these for the lower targets, and use your flying ones for anyone on the upstairs balcony."

"Fantastic!" Professor Colbert said. "This should do the trick. I'll get started at once. Saito, could you give me a hand?"

"Sure," Saito replied. Peering down into the bag, he pulled out a few more grenades, these ones shaped like large toilet paper rolls labelled M18. "Should we be using these as well?" he asked, pointing to the box.

"No," Tails replied. "Those are smoke grenades, but they might have tear gas or something mixed in, which could really hurt the other students if they can’t get out of the cloud, so it’s probably too risky. These people are melee fighters, so range is our friend, anyway. We don't want to be obscuring our vision that much.”

Saito nodded. The two disappeared up the ladder, leaving Tails in silence with Agnès and Louise.

"And what about us?" Louise asked.

Tails scratched his head, wondering exactly what to do with them. "Okay. Agnès, you take this," he said, handing Tabitha's handgun and the spare magazines to her. "It's a repeating pistol. You have eight shots in a magazine. When you need to change the magazines, press the button here, insert a new one, and press this lever down. Give it a few practice tests so you don't choke up."

Agnès took the handgun with fascination, practicing reloading and taking a sight picture. "How accurate is this thing? Isn't this too light?" she asked.

Tails shook his head. "Compared to that flintlock pistol of yours, this thing is as accurate as you are. I wouldn't push it past forty meters due to the lack of stopping power at range, but you could probably still put shots on target at that range. Louise, you'll be on support duty. If anyone sneaks up behind me, blow them up with your magic. I'll also give you this," Tails said, returning to his grocery bag to grab the laser sword he had taken. The pink energy-based blade popped into life, but he shut it down immediately by tapping the pommel. "It's a sword, but it's energy-based like my T-Buster, so it will be really light and easy for you to handle. It automatically turns on when you grab it, but you can shut it down by tapping the end of the handle, here. Be careful when you grab it, so you don't cut yourself with it," he said, handing the black device to Louise.

Nodding, she stored it the leg band she used for her wand. "Thanks," she said, confident with her new weapon. The group waited patiently for Professor Colbert and Saito to finish, Tails using the time to toss a couple darts on his board. After about five minutes, Professor Colbert dropped down into the workshop. "We're good to go. We should get started before they hurt anyone."

Tails grabbed all of the flashbang grenades in the grocery bag before following the others made their way to the ladder. Professor Colbert took the lead, checking for guards before dashing out of the workshop for the central wall with a box and his staff in hand. Tails could see the hole Professor Colbert was talking about as he ran, although it was much bigger than he had expected. "Did they really do that with just gunpowder? That must have been at least a few barrels full," he thought to himself. Tails pressed himself up against the wall near the edge of the gap, listening closely.

Ring opened a channel into Tails' mind, his growly voice ringing in the fox’s head. "Partner, get ready. There are two men just inside the wall on the left side of the gap, directly on the other side of the wall as you. Ther-"

"Hold it, Ring. Can you broadcast this to everyone at once without talking out loud?"

"Yeah, give me a sec… There. Everyone can hear me now. Two men just inside the wall, where Tails is. Three up in the balconies, pretty evenly distanced. Four others down on the floor beside the two just inside the wall. Got that?"

Everyone nodded in agreement, planning things out in their head. Professor Colbert set the box of magic origami bomb contraptions in the grass and gave his staff a short wave. The paper things began to inflate into small balls on their own, taking to the air and drifting into the dining room as if an invisible wind were pushing them. Tails handed a flashbang to Saito and pulled the pins on the other two he was holding, holding them with a white-knuckled iron grip to ensure the spoon hadn't released on accident. As soon as Professor Colbert gave the signal, Tails and Saito lobbed their grenades inside, spreading them out over the floor. Tails counted aloud for Professor Colbert to detonate his orbs, anticipating their detonation with each count.

When he reached zero, all hell broke loose.

The explosions were deafeningly loud, even to the group outside. As soon as the bright light subsided, everyone hopped up into the hole in the wall, taking their positions. Saito quickly dealt with the two guards on the hole's edge as Tails ran for the guards in the back of the room who were still reeling from the shock. Tails drew his tomahawk and slammed it into the bent-over soldier's stomach, leaving the deeply embedded axe behind as he made a beeline for the next soldier, drawing Ring as he ran. Over the din of the fight, the popping of Tabitha's handgun rang out as Agnès dropped the soldiers on the balcony with expert precision while slowly stepping toward the center of the room. Tails broke into a dead sprint as the final mercenary began to recover his wits, raising his axe to engage the yellow twin-tailed creature dashing at him. Tails blocked a heavy blow from the man's falling overhead axe swing as he tried to sweep the man's feet out from under him with his tails. However, the soldier dropped to his knee, pinning one of Tails' tails under his leg.

Tails cringed in pain as he tried to bring Ring down on the soldier's exposed neck, but the man was faster, broadsiding Tails with the flat face of his heavy war axe. Tails would have flown clear across the hall if it weren't for his pinned tail, sending him slamming into the ground. Tails rolled onto his back as he made a slashing swipe at the man's exposed leg, biting deep to the bone with Ring's weighted tip. The man recoiled away from Tails on one leg, giving Tails the chance he needed to back away and prepare another lunge. This time, Tails was faster, sinking Ring with a heavy stab straight into the man's sternum. He could hear and feel the bone give way under the blow, causing intense fracturing as if a small bone fragmentation grenade had gone off next to his heart. The man, in a final attempt to slay his opponent, reached to crush Tails' skull with his free hand, but Tails twisted Ring and pulled hard, slicing sideways through the man's heart. The mercenary crumpled to the ground, blood soaking the floor below him.

Tails turned to face the final opponent, grimacing in pain. Stars lined the edges of his vision, his head rang from the impact on the ground, and his right tail hung limply behind him from being dislocated by the force of being batted aside while his tail was pinned, but the rush of adrenaline in his body kept him focused on the enemy at hand. He could see Saito sneaking around behind the captives, slicing their bonds with Derflinger, but the fact hardly registered in his mind for more than a moment; Tails' focus was entirely on the white-haired mountain of a man who stood silently, hoisting his heavy steel mace over his shoulder.

"You have all done well to face me. I haven't had this much fun in the longest time!" the man stated in a heavy accent, smiling. "Not since I burned down villages have I had this much fun! But it pales in comparison to the true battle I have yet to face."

Hearing the man’s words, Tails glanced over to Agnès. Her eyes were wide, her hands twitching with rage. "You… were responsible for D'Angleterre?” she stuttered. “Are you the man that did it?"

The leader paused for a moment, as if he were pondering something. "Yes… That name is ringing a bell… Ah, yes, the village we torched! It was claimed to be full of plague victims. I knew it wasn't, but I didn't care. I just wanted to burn something!"

Agnès let out a bloodcurdling scream as she drew her sword, tossing Tabitha’s pistol aside. Darting up to the man with lightning speed, she crossed blades with the leader's mace, stopping her cold in her advance. "You torched my village, you bastard! You killed my parents!"

The man pulled back his mace, forcing her to step back with a swing of his mace that whistled through where she had been moments before. "So you are the lone survivor, are you not? I suppose it is good that we properly finish the job, then!" The leader leveled his mace, pointing the tip at Agnès. Without so much as a single word uttered, a small orb of red energy collected at the tip and, after a moment, spewed forth as a torrent of fire. Agnès leaped aside, scooping up the handgun she had dropped as she ran. She fumbled the first magazine reload while running but managed to load the second magazine, taking potshots as she darted between cover behind overturned tables that ignited with ease under the blazing inferno.

The leader, forced to block her attacks, managed to deflect any on-target shots with his mace, torching Agnès' cover as she went. Suddenly, the man stopped his assault, turning to face the gap with a look of surprised joy. "Can it be…? I recognize that smell… the smell of charred death. It is! The Snake of Flame!" he rambled with a sickening glee.

Tails looked beyond the leader, tracing his line of sight to see him staring at Professor Colbert.

"Still blind in more ways than one, I see. Benubiro," Professor Colbert stated, taking a combat stance with his staff.

"No wonder I haven't been able to find you on the battlefield for so long!” the man Colbert called Benubiro exclaimed, laughing loudly. "A teacher! You, of all people! This is too much. Now, we can finally see who has truly become the strongest once more!"

Agnès stood up from behind her smoldering cover in angered confusion, dropping the empty handgun once more. Tails watched as she looked back and forth between the two, watching as the two magicians traded fiery blows in a test of endurance, blue flames spewing forth from Professor Colbert's staff to combat Benubiro's red flames. Tails could see as something finally clicked in her brain, a moment of clarity as her eyes flew wide. She drew her sword and pointed it at Professor Colbert. "It was you! I recognize that blue flame! It was you! It was you!" she cried maniacally.

As if in slow motion, Tails watched as Agnès rushed Colbert, ignorant as Benubiro happily re-aimed his staff on her. He let loose a torrent of flames, aimed perfectly to intercept her movements. With a final burst of speed, Colbert lunged at Agnès, catching her before she could swing her sword and throwing her to the ground before the stream of flames caught him head-on, briefly engulfing him. Tails and Saito both rushed toward Colbert as he struggled to his feet, raising his staff once more.

"Haven't you had enough, old man? You're no longer as strong as you were, yet you refuse to acknowledge that. And it will be your doom!" Benubiro yelled, launching a final fireball at Colbert.

Tails could feel the heat of the approaching blaze and stepped out in front with Ring held forward, praying that his sword-spirit friend was ready to activate his Familiar rune to shield them. Before he knew what hit him, though, he felt Professor Colbert shove him aside moments before taking the blast head-on, allowing himself to be engulfed in the flames. Suddenly, the blaze of crimson fire that engulfed Professor Colbert turned blue, launching itself back at Benubiro. It ensnared him in a spherical cage of fire, slowly constricting him bit by bit.

"So this is the power… of the Snake of Flame… Fantastic!" Benubiro managed to say between breaths, slowly choking as the fire consumed him. Benubiro's body slowly burned, leaving behind a blackened crisp of a man that toppled to the ground. Tails turned his attention to Colbert, who was now struggling for a breath. Blood was running from the edge of his mouth, signs that Tails knew indicated internal bleeding.

"Louise! Give Tabitha your wand! We need magic over here!" Tails cried, tears running into his eyes. Louise and Tabitha stood next to him, Tabitha chanting away once more. Professor Colbert shook his head, as if to disapprove.

"I don't believe that will help here. I thank you all for your help. It finally finishes my mission… to bury my past," Professor Colbert whispered. Tails felt a hand on his shoulder, and was suddenly shoved aside. Agnès was on top of Colbert in a flash, her saber’s tip at his chest. Saito made a lunge for her, but Professor Colbert held up his hand.

"This is for her to decide. I dealt this incredible pain to her. It is her decision," Professor Colbert stated. Agnès looked as if she were really about to do it for a few moments, but noticed something on Professor Colbert's exposed right shoulder where the flames had burnt away some of his blue coat. She flipped him on his stomach and cut his shirt, revealing a large white scar along his right shoulder. She sat back, tears streaming down her face as she raised her sword again.

Professor Colbert rolled back onto his back. "Yes. Now you know. I realized my mistake and attempted to atone for it by saving who I could. I had no knowledge that the Plague was a lie. You were the only one I could find. I'm sorry…"

Agnès raised her sword again, but Louise blocked her by pushing the blade off target. "It's already done," she managed through her tears. "Leave him be."

Tails was floored. For a moment, his mouth hung open, speechless from shock. "But what about knowledge? And life? Shouldn't he have pursued those instead of giving his life for something so stupid?" Tears flooded to his eyes, soaking his facial fur. "I hadn't even given him the book I had for him. He would have loved it. I could have helped him with my shield, but he pushed me aside…"

Headmaster Osmond, having silently been standing over Tails' shoulder, finally spoke up. "I knew this would happen when he first told me of his history when I hired him. He believed it was his duty to finish what he had started. He felt he had created a monster, and that it was his responsibility to finish it. What we failed to understand, however, was that the monster wasn't just Benubiro. It was himself."

Agnès, seeing her lifelong enemy dead, threw aside her blade in a fit of rage, on her knees beside the rest of the group. The single motive that kept her going, after all these years, had resulted in an indecisive victory. One thought rang out in the minds of everyone present.

"Why?"


	53. Season 2 Chapter 19

**SEASON 2 CHAPTER 19**

Tails sat quietly in his workshop, reading over the physics textbook he still had. It was morning already, but he hadn't slept. He had only allowed Tabitha to heal his dislocated tail and leg for a while, secluding himself from everyone else by placing a lock on the trapdoor. He was still trying to sort out what had happened, trying to figure out his deceased friend’s line of thought.

"Why would he leave us?" he asked out loud, to no one in particular. "We needed him. He wanted to atone for what he had done, but surely he didn't have to kill himself in the process? What about wanting to continue his research with me? He had to have loved that, right? Why would he leave that behind for something so stupid?!"

Tails shut the book, having read it from cover to cover multiple times. He didn't learn much he didn't already know, but it felt comforting all the same. He headed for the ladder and climbed upstairs, stopping to reminisce on the time he spent with Professor Colbert in the upstairs workshop, when he first came to this world. He browsed around among the dusty, unfinished projects, catching sight of a clean, unsealed envelope. It was addressed to Saito, but he decided to flick it open anyways.

 

_Dear Saito Hiraga and Miles Prower_

_I wanted to thank you so much for the time I spent with both of you. It was enjoyable beyond comprehension, giving me hopes of starting over fresh. If you are reading this, I am most likely dead. In case I failed to share my complete backstory before my death, I have left Headmaster Osmond with instructions to relay a full summary I left with him. Hopefully, this is not the case._

_I hope that I will never have to share this letter with you. As soon as I came to know each of you, I yearned to visit your worlds and leave behind this darkened past of mine, to begin again. Saito, your youthful innocence and colorful stories of your world never ceased to excite me, with your stories of your home and city, Tokyo. Miles, your technological prowess thrills me beyond all words, as to the untrained eye they are works of magic, even among wizards. I hope that someday I will be able to join you in your complex studies and join you on your wonderful dimension-hopping adventures. I hope I spelled that correctly!_

_I have watched you two grow from the moment you arrived, from figures of skepticism among the students to admired heroes of the realm, accomplishments that many only dream of. I believe both of you are extremely important to us in the times to come, and look forward to seeing you grow into fine young adults. I only wish that you had never become involved in the senseless killing that this world demands of you, this endless war of ours._

_I wish you the best in life, and hope that you never have to experience anything as horrible as what I have done. Perhaps we will see each other on the other side, despite our different worlds? I hope that day is long in the future for you two._

_Best regards,_

_Jean Stéphane_   _Colbert_

 

Tails noted that there was some sort of water stain on the letter, but didn't want to think about what it was. He folded the letter back up and slid it into its envelope, heading for the door to go find Saito and deliver the message. He found the Japanese boy working on the Zero, or rather, sitting blankly in the cockpit, hands hanging out as he sat silently.

"Hey. I found this. Professor Colbert wanted you to see it," Tails said, not making eye contact. Saito gently took the envelope and removed the letter, taking a moment to read it. Tails could see a few small tears form in his eyes, but he quickly wiped these away. "Yeah, I know. It's sad, but he's gone now. We just need to focus on doing our best to return home, since there's nothing we can do now."

Saito nodded. He handed the letter back to Tails, still thinking about what he just read. "We need to go back, don't we?" he asked.

Tails nodded, his mind on 100% logical mode. "Aside from the fact that planets could quite literally jump dimensions and collide if we stay here too long, yes, I think it's best that we return as soon as possible. All we're doing is creating relationships with people we'll have to permanently break in the end, or permanently break relationships with those we knew in our old life. We get hurt either way."

Saito rested his head on the side of the cockpit, watching Tails. "I know, but hey, at least we have a long time before the next solar eclipse. Let's make it a good one, alright?"

"Right," Tails said, perking up again. "I'm sure that's what Professor Colbert would want. Anyways, I need to go put my wristcomm back together, so I'll be down in my workshop. Drop by if you need me."

Tails returned to his workshop, feeling much better now that he had gotten a load off of his chest. He sat down at his workbench, grabbed a jeweler's screwdriver from a dirty mug he was using as a tool holder, and set to work piecing back together his wristcomm with the upgrade he'd built. After about fifteen minutes, he had finally pieced the watch back together, giving it a good polish with an oil rag and degreaser. He cycled through the menu of options to select his new module, a basic map program that could be charted by a wireless drone, if he ever got around to building one. He could also hook it up to the X Tornado's air or ground targeting radar to make a basic topographical map, if need be. With a press of a button, his T-Buster re-materialized around his arm, its polished red metal giving Tails a sense of comfort at seeing his old friend again.

 Done with his work, he decided to lay down for a little while. He tossed the screwdriver back into the mug and walked over to his canvas hammock, falling in on his back. Within minutes, sleep took over.

* * *

 

He didn't know how long he was out for, but Saito was over Tails, shaking him awake for some reason.

"Tails, get up, we gotta go. Another messenger from the castle came. Mission from the Queen."

"Uughhh… what now?" Tails said, rubbing his eyes as he sat up in bed.

"The Princess wants Louise's help. She wants her to attack a city with that same magic she blew up the Albion fleet with. We need to get her there."

"And how do you plan to get her there?" Tails asked. "We can't take my Tornado, I haven't fixed the canopy glass on it yet. That could take a while, since that's the one material my printer can't work with. I'd have to use the printer to make a mold, then find someone that can make molten glass and get them to pour the mold then m-"

"Yeah yeah, I know, I get it," Saito interrupted, obviously a bit impatient. "We'll take the Zero. You can ride on the wing like you did last time, Louise will be in my lap on the way there. We need to get going now, if we are going to make it back here by nightfall."

It took a moment for Tail to comprehend his logic, but then it clicked. "Oh, right. No actual airstrip, no landing lights, no night landings. Forgot, sorry. Yeah, let me grab Ring and I'll be good to go."

Tails rolled out of his hammock and walked over to his workbench, grabbing Ring in his sheath where he had left him last night. He thought about taking Tabitha's pistol with him, but decided there wasn't any advantage it had over his T-Buster. "I should probably return that soon. I'll have to make more cartridges though; I'm pretty sure Agnès ran through almost all of the ones I had made up. I might be able to find the brass she left behind in the dining hall, though," Tails thought to himself. He checked the Power Rings in his shoes, ensuring that they were in good condition and ready to go. "Alright, I'm good. Let's get going,” he said.

Saito led the way out of the workshop and over to the Zero where Louise was already waiting. Saito jumped up onto the wing and helped Louise up, then took a seat in the cockpit. Once he was settled, Louise took a seat on his lap. He gave Tails a thumbs-up, giving him the go-ahead to start the engine.

Tails gave a hard heave on the propeller blade closest to him, steering clear of the spinning propeller as the engine coughed and sputtered before roaring to life. Like before, he hopped up onto the wing and engaged his rocket shoes in reverse, clinging to the wing's leading edge for dear life as the gunpowder thrust engines engaged, launching the plane forward with incredible uncanny acceleration. The plane cleared the wall with room to spare as they rose into the sky, headed off toward the mountains on the distant horizon.

* * *

 

Tails passed the hour of flight time by watching his surroundings, noting the change in landscape as they flew. He did his best to get some sleep while he waited, but the sound of the wind and the engine roaring in his ears prevented him from getting any. Eventually, Tails caught sight of what appeared to be a small village below, nestled among a half-circle of snowy mountains. "Do they really intend to destroy this place? It doesn't look dangerous," he thought to himself. However, behind a small grove of trees on the outskirts of town, he caught sight of a large set of tents lit up with many torches.

He heard the Zero's canopy slide back and looked over to see Louise standing up in the plane, her wand pointed directly forward and eyes closed. She began muttering some incomprehensible words that Tails couldn't hear over the wind and engine, but something had clearly gone wrong. After about three minutes of talking, Louise opened her eyes and sat down in the plane, shutting the canopy. She and Saito had some sort of brief argument, but soon calmed back down.

"Partner, there's somebody behind us!" Ring called to Tails mentally.

Tails looked around to check the airspace and caught sight of a single dragon soaring behind them. He frantically knocked on the glass, pointing back at the dragon following them when Saito turned to face him.

Nodding in response, Saito cut the throttle and pulled a steep low-speed turn before he gunned the engine, sending the Zero rocketing toward its target. Both combatants held their fire as they passed each other, allowing Tails to get a good view of the rider -- a young man most likely in his late teens, staring at them with fierce, determined eyes as they passed.

The plane and dragon rose into the sky even higher as they tried to gain an altitude advantage on their opponent, occasionally trying to strafe each other with spells and gunfire. The chatter of the 7.7-millimeter machineguns and the sputter of the 20-millimeter cannons rang in Tails' ears as he himself drew his T-Buster and opened fire with rapid-fire stun bolts. He could see that, on head-on combat, the 7.7's were nearly useless due to the angle of impact, skipping off of the fire dragon's thick, rounded hide. The 20’s had more effect, occasionally ripping open a few long gashes in the beast’s carapace as they pummeled the creature.

The rider had his mount return fire, launching fireballs from its mouth that whizzed around Tails and the plane. One scored a hit, leaving a nasty burn-mark on the thin duralumin-metal fuselage, causing some deformation from the heat. “Ooh, hot, hot!” he yelped as he brushed away flecks of burning paint that had flown off and stuck to his fur.

Thanks to his independent aim, Tails was able to score many more successful hits that were slowly having a marked effect on the dragon. Its movements were becoming jerky and unstable as his stun pulses fluctuated its muscles involuntarily, but still it forced itself onward for the sake of its rider. Saito seized one such moment when the dragon's wing jerked, causing it to dive involuntarily. He pitched the nose of the Zero downward after his target, opening up on the dragon's exposed back as it fell. The 20mm, now able to strike at a near-perpendicular angle, was able to punch cleanly through the dragon, shredding it to pieces with bloody puffs as the explosive filler detonated deep inside the beast. The dragon let loose with a final dying ball of fire, catching the plane square in the engine. “Oh fuck!” Tails could hear Saito yell over the whistling wind. He watched as the engine sputtered and began to cough, wisps of smoke leaking from around the engine service cowling as Saito pulled out of the dive, looking for someplace to land.

Saito killed the engine as Tails carefully stepped forward to open the service hatch, letting loose a billowing cloud of black smoke that spewed out of the engine compartment. Despite the wind sucking the pitch-black smoke out of the compartment, it never seemed to stop. “Burning oil. Crap, that’s really bad,” Tails thought as he peered down into the compartment as best he could, trying to find any potential fire. He heard Saito banging on the canopy glass and looked back at him, watching him point to something far below.

Glancing down, Tails saw several long, open strips of snow on the mountainside – plenty of space for him to land. He shut the engine cowling and gave Saito a thumbs-up as he shut off his rocket shoes, allowing himself to slide off of the wing and fall to the ground below.


	54. Season 2 Chapter 20

**SEASON 2 CHAPTER 20**

Tails landed gently in the soft snow, quickly turning his attention to the plane silently gliding overhead. He watched as Saito made the final turn to line himself up with the strip of tree-less snow, bleeding speed as much as he could by pitching the nose of the plane up into a stall. In a puff of snow, the plane landed belly-down in the soft powder, sliding up the hill until the snow pile-up in front of it brought it to a halt.

He ran over to the plane once it was fully stopped, disregarding his two friends as he hastily opened the engine compartment. Saito and Louise slid open the canopy and hopped out, rubbing their heads after the brief, jarring impact. "Thanks for the warm welcome," Saito joked, watching the fox obsess over the engine of the plane. Tails looked back at them as if they were crazy.

"You do realize this is really our only way home, right? Unless you want to go marching through hostile territory and expect to catch a taxi, with money that we don't have. Assuming Louise still hasn't gotten her paycheck, anyways."

"Anyways, how is it? Any chance that we can fix it?" Saito asked.

Tails shook his head. "Not without my tools. I’m guessing this engine had a significant amount of flying time on the clock before Siesta’s grandfather was brought here. I’m guessing it was an old piston ring or gasket somewhere that cracked and leaked oil all over the engine. When that dragon hit the engine with the fireball, it all ignited, which caused the damaged piston to start to seize. The only way to fix that without an entire engine rebuild is… well, actually, you can't. We would need to use my laser cutter to cut the piston free and re-machine a new one, and then re-mac-"

"We get it, it's broken. Please shut up, my head hurts like mad right now," Louise stated angrily. "Anyway, we need to get off the mountain before we freeze to death."

"What about the plane?” Tails asked incredulously. “We can't let it fall into enemy hands! If they found a way to reverse-engineer it, we would be TOTALLY screwed. Mr. Colbert and Headmaster Osmond told me not to let that happen!"

"Well, as much as I hate to say it, we could just torch the plane. That would destroy it, right?" Saito offered.

As much as he hated the idea, which was probably about five times as much as Saito, Tails sort of had to agree with him. However, he still couldn’t help but nitpick the plan apart – anything to keep the plane in one piece. "Torching it won't destroy some of the crucial elements, like the guns. It might make it permanently unflyable, but it won't stop them from being able to learn the concepts," Tails argued.

"I think we can just leave the damn thing and go home," Louise stated glumly. "The Queen said that if we didn't complete the mission by tonight, she was going to send the army in to take over the town. Even if we did destroy South Gotha, she would still send the army in to check on the results. They'll be here within a day, so I say we go around the town and make our way back east, so we can intercept the Queen's army column and explain that I couldn’t do what she asked, and that we need their help. I doubt the Albians will be able to get the Dragon out of here in time, so we'll get it back either way. End of story, we’re leaving."

Tails and Saito shrugged at each other, not willing to push Louise any farther. "If it involves not destroying the plane, I'm all for it,” Tails stated. “Even if the Albians do get it for a short while, we can steal it back, right?”

With that, the three headed off toward the town, trudging through the soft, fluffy snow.

* * *

 

Saito tapped Louise and Tails on the shoulder. "Hey, look! It's that dragon we shot down," he whispered, pointing at a red mass through the trees as they walked. With Ring and Derflinger drawn, the three approached slowly toward the dragon, unsure as to whether it was dead or not.

"Ring, can you tell if anyone's still alive over there?" Tails said aloud.

"Yeah, the rider's still alive. Dragon's dead,” Ring replied.

"Is he awake?" Saito asked.

"Yeah, he is. Careful."

Saito drew Derf and slowly approached the deceased dragon's body, ready to engage. He slowly lifted the large wing of the dragon, only to be lunged on by the rider who was hiding inside. Saito quickly brought Derflinger close to his chest and pushed the rider’s saber aside, disarming the rider as he grabbed his sword-arm and twisted it behind the rider's back. The rider responded by sweeping Saito's legs out from under him with a swift kick, dropping them both to the ground as the rider lost balance. Tails quickly jumped into the fray, drawing Ring and holding him at the rider's throat.

"What's your name?" Tails asked, holding the blade closer to the young man's throat.

"What does it matter to you? Hurry up and finish it," the man said.

Tails shook his head with a frown. "That's not what I asked. Tell me your name, or I'm going to refer to you as Joe. We don't want to kill you."

The young man spat in Tails' face. He rubbed it out with his gloved hand, looking back to the young man. "Alright, Joe. We can do this the hard way, or my way. We either leave you up here to freeze, since you have an injured leg and can't walk, or we can help you down the mountain back to your town, where you can go back to living a normal life. Your call."

The man broke eye contact with Tails and sat in silence for a moment, then made up his mind. "Fine. But don't expect any favors from me for this. You still killed Francesca."

Tails eyed the dragon, staring at the massive wounds left by the 20-millimeter shell impacts. Crimson blood stained the snow around the dragon, still steaming against the snow like some perverse cherry snowcone. "Yeah, that was her name," the rider stated. "You got a problem with that?"

"Not at all. I'm just sorry it turned out this way," Tails said. He removed Ring from the rider's throat and pulled him to his feet, watching him closely. Saito took the liberty of removing a spare knife the rider had clipped to his belt, handing it to Louise. Together, Saito and Tails both took the rider over their shoulder, helping him limp along as they went. Louise followed alongside Saito, watching the rider closely.

"How did you know his leg was injured, Tails?" Louise asked, scanning the boy's legs for any signs of wounds. There weren't any that she could see.

"He wouldn't have fallen over after sweeping Saito's legs if the one he was forced to stand on wasn't injured. Probably broken from the fall, but I'm no doctor," Tails replied, staring forward into the snowy forest.

The group kept on walking as long as the rider was able, until he had to stop to take a rest. Tails and Saito set the rider on a stump and took a seat on the fallen tree next to it. The rider was downcast, not wanting to talk in the slightest.

"So, you still haven't told us your name," Saito began. "Would you tell us?"

"Fine, if it'll get you to shut up. It's Henry," the rider stated, not looking up from the snow below him.

Tails was fed up with this dude's attitude. "Listen, Henry, I know we killed your dragon friend. We're really, REALLY sorry about that, but we were just doing surveillance and didn't plan to attack. It didn't have to be this way. Can you please forgive us so we can all not be angry at each other while we try to get you home?"

Henry sat in silence again.

"Is something bothering you?"

Still silence.

"We won't go telling anyone, you know. Even if we did, no one would know who you are because we don't know your last name. What's wrong?"

Finally, Henry reacted. "It's you, that's what! You're enemy, you defeated me. You are supposed to kill me and move on. Death in combat is honorable, but survival on the assistance of the enemy is weak, and disloyal to the Albian Army."

Tails heard an audible slap noise, looking over to see Saito holding his hand to his forehead. "That's gotta be the dumbest thing I've heard in my entire life," Saito commented.

Henry tried to stand and reach for his sword, but forgot that it was taken from him. He sat back down on his stump and stared at Saito angrily. "Don't insult me, or I'll still hobble over there and shove my steel-toed broken foot up your ass," he responded.

Tails fell backwards over his stump, laughing hard enough to leave him winded. "Man, Saito, are you going to take that sitting down?" he asked, catching his breath.

Saito waved off the challenge with a grin. "Nah. Wouldn't be fair. Anyways, a close friend of mine told me that we should fight to live, not fight to die. You're looking at things the wrong way."

Henry was still mad, but rested his head in his hands. "So you would think. I suppose a commoner knows nothing on the matter of honor, does he?"

Without warning, Saito stood up, looking down on Henry with a ferocious look in his eye. "Don't you tell me about nobility and honor!” he spat, grabbing the young man by the collar and hauling him to his feet. “As far as I'm concerned, all of you nobles are just narcissistic, chauvinistic assholes that only care about social image. Have you ever thought about the rest of the world that lives for bread from day to day, while you jerks duel it out with THEIR lives at stake, for some unmeasurable social construct called honor? No, you deem them too fucking low in the social code to give a shit about! Honor is when you command the respect of EVERYONE, every single person no matter their mindset. Not just like-minded, egotistical jerks like yourself. If you seriously think wanting to kill yourself on a battlefield to preserve some positive social image is normal, then you need to step the fuck out from under the rock you’re living under and take a look at who you would affect if you were gone. Your family? Your friends? Any loved ones? Yeah. Those guys. Figure it out. They love you and need you way more than you think, and honor won’t keep them from crying when they bury you six feet under.”

Louise and Tails shared an expression of mild shock. Tails had never seen Saito this worked up over something, but he couldn’t help but agree with Saito's rage-filled statements. Saito, finished with his rant, threw the young man back on the stump and took a seat back on the log where he had been. Tails noticed that Henry was hunched over, nervously fumbling with a small necklace locket.

"What's in the locket, Henry?" Tails asked. The boy sat up, tucking the locket back under his uniform.

"Nothing, just a small painting," he replied, blushing now.

"I'm calling you on that bluff," Saito said, calm now. "It's a girlfriend, isn't it?"

Henry nodded slowly. "I told her I would go off and become the greatest knight that I could, so I could marry her and have an honorable status."

"There you go with honor again! Just drop it. Go back and marry her," Saito argued. "What do you think would happen if you died? She would probably be married off to someone else for land or money for her family. You wouldn't want that, right? Go back and marry her before it's too late."

Henry nodded silently. He was blushing, clearly embarrassed to have something so sensitive revealed. Tails looked around awkwardly as he waited for the break to end, noting that Louise was blushing too, although much more discreetly than Henry as she occasionally stole glances at Saito.

After several more silent minutes of rest, Henry decided he was good to go. Tails and Saito helped him up to his feet and began trudging through the snow, but didn't get far before they had to duck for cover. A single gunshot rang out in the air, causing everyone to quickly drop to the ground and survey the landscape in the general direction of the shot, looking for the source. Tails motioned for Saito to help him move behind a small snowdrift next to a tree, sliding along the freezing snow to cover. Shortly after they had taken their hiding place, a group of rifle-armed soldiers came over the horizon, laughing and slapping each other on the back. One man was carrying a rabbit, clearly dead by the way the man was holding it by its hind legs.

"Saito, hand me my sword," Henry asked. Saito cautiously handed Henry back his knife and sword, wary of any sudden movements. Henry sheathed his sword and knife and stood up, stumbling out of cover toward the group of soldiers.

"Hey, guys! Over here, I need help!" Henry called. Tails could hear the soldiers mumble something as he sat behind cover, followed by the sound of footsteps. He heard a small *poof*, which he presumed to be Henry falling in the snow.

"Are you okay, m'boy?" Tails heard a soldier say.

"My leg's broken from the fall. My dragon saved me after we were shot down by that… thing."

The soldier chuckled. "So that was you, then? The unfortunate bastard they sent out against that cursed dragon? Well, be glad you're alive. I heard it took down airships back during the initial invasion. Come along, we'll get that leg fixed right up."

Tails listened closely as the soldier's footsteps faded out of earshot until he dared peeking over the drift. Henry was looking back at them with a smile on his face, but turned his attention back to the soldier so as to not give away their position.

"Phew, that was close," Saito said, watching the two disappear over the hill's edge after their companions. "I thought he hated us, being the enemy?"

Tails gave Saito a sidelong glance. "You didn't hear your own words back there, did you? You scared him out of it. He might’ve cried, too. You changed him, Saito. Anyways, let's get out of here before they come back."

The three stood up and took off, jogging through the dense snow toward the east, hopefully to safety again.


	55. Season 2 Chapter 21

**SEASON 2 CHAPTER 21**

The three had been on the run for a large chunk of the afternoon, weaving in and out of the trees as patrols passed by in the forest. They had finally decided to take shelter for the evening inside a massive boulder that Tails widened an existing hole on, making it big enough for the three to sit comfortably once the stone had cooled.

"I'm starving!" Louise complained, huddling up in the deepest part of the den. "Saito, go find us something to eat."

"Me?!" Saito asked incredulously, pointing at himself. "I don't know how to hunt, and would probably end up poisoning us all if I picked berries. Besides, a sword wouldn't do me any good to catch anything." He poked his head out of the den, taking a final check of the surroundings for any approaching soldiers. Satisfied that their hiding place was safe, he crawled back inside and took a seat next to Louise. "Tails, you probably know more than I do. Could you find us anything? I'll cook it if you do."

"No way on the hunting, I only know how to cook. I don't know the first thing about cleaning a deer or gutting a fish," Tails said, pondering a few ideas. One struck him as relatively interesting. He drew Ring from his sheath, looking outside. "Ring, can you read the minds of animals and tell me where one is?"

"No can do, partner. Animals are instinctual, so they don't have a similar short-term memory quite like humans do. You and Sylphid are the two exceptions to that rule so far," Ring replied.

Tails let out a sigh, the steam of his breath obscuring his vision a bit. “Alright, whatever. We can find some mint for tea. It's about the only herb I trust myself not to mistake for poisonous things, at least." He crawled out of the den and stood up, stretching for a moment as he took in the view of the shadow-draped snowy mountains as the sun set behind the range. He took off down the hill in bounding steps, sinking a bit into the snow with each landing.

"Man, this place reminds me so much of Ice Cap zone back in the day," Tails thought to himself. "Makes me wish I had a snowboard right now. I wonder how Knuckles is doing…"

After about fifteen minutes of his tiring hike, Tails found a small clearing near the edge of the ice line that still had many green shrubs and plants. He took a moment to catch his breath, and then set out on his mission, picking various kinds of leaves with impunity thanks to his gloves. When he'd collected a satisfactory variety, he began tearing the leaves and sniffing the cut edges until he was able to identify a few varieties of mint. Ten minutes of picking yielded two handfuls of a mixed bunch of mint leaves and a small stone carrying bowl he hollowed out with his plasma cutter, the snow still steaming where he dumped the liquid stone.

Suddenly, Tails caught a flash of movement in the corner of his eye. He dropped the bowl and darted for the nearest tree, folding his tails in front of him to minimize his profile. A startled six-point buck darted out of a nearby bush and took off into the forest, a brown blur between the trees by the time Tails regained composure. He let out a sigh with a hand on his chest.

"Jeez, that almost gave me a heart attack. Stupid deer…" he muttered, returning to his bowl. He collected up a few bits of mint that had dropped, and began to leave, but stopped just short of the clearing's edge. He turned back to the clearing and scanned one more time, noticing the bush the deer had been hiding in. It was a berry bush, still loaded with blueberry-esque fruit for the picking. Tails approached the bush and plucked a ripe berry, eyeing it closely. He crushed the berry between his fingers and sniffed at the dark juice that coated his glove, savoring the tart smell.

"I think I remember my neighbors Miss Vanilla and Cream making blueberry pies in summer, though… It wouldn't make sense for them to thrive here." Tails thought.

"No, those are huckleberries, I do believe," Ring projected into Tails' mind. "They might make a good tea additive if you dry them, but they're good raw, too."

"Riiight… I'm trusting you on this one. If I die, I'm gonna come back and choke you in the spirit world," Tails thought back. He popped one into his mouth, biting down. A wave of juciy tartness overtook his mouth. "Yeah, these are good!" he thought with a nod.

He set his bowl of mint down and hunted down the other half of the stone he cut to make his first bowl, making short work of it with his plasma cutter. He poured out the molten stone gently into the snow, careful to avoid the scalding steam that ensued. After soaking the inside of the bowl with snow until it was cool, he began emptying the bush, filling the bowl to the brim with its berries. Having picked the bush clean, he picked up both bowls and began making his way back to the den, deciding he could risk flying at low altitude to shorten the trip.

He made it back to the den in short time, poking his head in to greet the two freezing people.

"Did you find anything?" Louise asked.

"Yup!" Tails exclaimed, gently sliding the two bowls into the den. "The berries are edible according to Ring, and they taste pretty good. The mint is for tea, but I need to go make a couple more bowls to boil water and drink out of. Be right back."

Tails found two more stones to cut in half, quickly carving them into four deep bowls as he had already done. He filled them with snow and held his plasma cutter nearby, bringing the water to a boil in each one. Satisfied that the stone was disinfected and rinsed clean of any dirt or debris, he tossed out the old water and refreshed it with clean snow, re-boiling it. He slowly carried the stone bowls into the den one by one until all four were inside, filling the den with steam. Tails took a pinch of mint leaves and began tearing them up bit by bit, dropping them into the bowl of hot water. Louise and Saito followed suit, filling the air with the scent of mint. After five minutes, Tails removed his glove and used it to filter out the used mint leaves, leaving behind the yellow-green tea ready to go. He offered his glove to Louise to do the same and took a deep sip of his bowl, savoring the flavor.

"Yeah, man! Now THAT's good tea!" Tails commented. Saito tested his, accidentally burning his lips.

"Owowow! That's still super hot. How can you drink it like that?" Saito asked.

Tails shrugged, not really sure how to explain it. "I think I boiled this bowl first, so it's had the longest to cool down." He reached for the bowl of berries and took a small handful, tossing them into his mouth.

Despite having made a dent in her tea, Louise was shivering still. "It's freezing in here! How are you two still so calm?"

Tails laughed a little. "Sorry, but miniskirts and thin stockings aren't exactly suitable winter legwear," he replied. "Just flip your cape around and I think you’ll be fine." He drew his T-Buster and extracted a Power Ring from the micro generator, letting the ring's dim, yellowish, pulsing glow fill the den.

Louise undid her neck clasp, bringing her cape around in front of her. Saito removed Derflinger from his back so that he could sit up against the wall more comfortably, setting him on the ground at his feet.

Derf popped out of his sheath a ways so he could speak. "You know, body heat transfers better without clothes on… right?" Perhaps you co-"

Without hesistation, Tails reached over, slammed Derf down into his scabbard, and tossed him out of the den into the snow. Saito moved to go fetch him, but Tails stopped him. "I'll go get him in a bit. Just let him sit… I'll be outside."

He grabbed a final handful of berries, mint leaves and his bowl of tea before crawling outside. It was thoroughly dark out now, so Tails had to draw his T-Buster and use the dim light of a sustained charge to find Derf. He plucked the sword out of the snow by the sheath belt and carried him over to a stump where he took a seat.

Tails took a swig of his tea, emptying the bowl. "You know, if you want to see Saito and Louise together, you could do it by more subtle means."

Derf laughed out loud, his voice echoing across the snowy landscape. "With a blockhead like Saito? No way. Although he's pretty good at other things, he's a total newbie to relationships. You gotta baby him like you wouldn't believe."

"Really?" Tails stated incredulously. "He seems like a nice guy. I'd figure women would be all over him from his world."

"Nope. He told me a while ago that his Familiar's Pact kiss was his first. I found it hard to believe, but he sure acts like it's true. Not that you're any better."

"Screw off," Tails said, blushing in the darkness.

Now Ring popped out of his sheath. "Hey Derflinger, they're doin' it!" he said with a triumphant laugh.

"Whooo! Go partner!" Derf called out loud.

"Shut up!" Louise called out of the den, her voice muted and hard to hear.

"Ring, keep me updated," Derf stated quietly, letting out a sigh.

Ring cleared his "throat" with a superfluous cough. "Louise has totally s-"

Tails shut down the conversation immediately, not wanting to listen in on his friends’ private lives. "Use that handy mental broadcast power of yours, 'cuz I don't want to hear it." He sat in silence, staring at the stars through the skeletal birch trees. Derf occasionally let out a laugh, but finally slid back into his sheath after a bit of abuse from Tails. "Those soldiers will find us if you don't shut up," he warned.

"Sorry. They're both asleep now, anyways," Derf responded, sliding into his sheath.

"I suppose I should get to bed, too," Tails thought “No way I’m heading up there, that’s for sure.” He shut his eyes after a final glimpse of the stars, allowing the cold air to carry him off into a deep sleep.

* * *

 

Some noise in the distance pulled Tails from his dreamless sleep, startling him awake. He brushed his frost-coated pelt with his hands to remove the bulk of the light snow that had fallen on him and listened closely. He could hear many rapid pops, and a bit of screaming, spurring him to action. He strapped Ring around his waist and shoulder and grabbed Derf by his scabbard’s shoulder strap, sprinting for the den.

"Guys, guys, wake up!" he whispered loudly, trying to catch their attention, but they were too deeply asleep. Unwilling to personally interrupt their intimate sleep, he gathered some snow in his hand and tossed it at Saito, catching him in the face. The boy bolted to attention, looking around frantically as he stepped out of the dreamworld.

"Wake Louise and get out here," Tails said, tossing Derflinger to him. "The Queen's army is here, and they're fighting in the town. We need to go help."

Saito nodded and reached under Louise’s cloak to shake her awake. Tails stood by the cave entrance with his T-Buster drawn, waiting patiently as Louise got dressed and ready. When the two stepped outside, everyone made their way slowly through the snowy forest toward the town.

* * *

 

South Gotha was a total warzone, with squadrons of soldiers with a mix of crossbows, rifles, and swords charging from street to street to reinforce defense lines made of grain bags and overturned horse carts. Entering town, Tails could see the Queen's men making valiant charges through the streets, taking cover from volleys of rifle fire and charging between reloads with swords and bayonet-tipped rifles at the ready.

"We should be able to ambush a defender line or two to assist in the charge, since we are behind their lines," Tails said, taking another peek around the corner of the building the three were pressed up against. "Louise, there's a squadron just down the street here you could do a lot of damage to if you hit them with an explosion spell. I'll head over to the next street and do the same with my T-Buster. Saito, you can do whatever you like.”

"I'll stick with Louise in case we get caught by a reinforcement party," Saito replied. "Good luck,"

Tails nodded. Watching the defenders closely, he counted to three in his head and darted across the street when he reached zero, taking cover behind a hay cart on the corner of the next street over. An explosion rocked the ground nearby, with smoke and debris flying everywhere. Through the smoke, he saw one man running along the defense line through his street with his clothes and hair on fire, frantically trying to find a water source to extinguish himself.

Tails refocused on the defense line and took aim with his T-Buster, letting loose with a series of bolts form his arm-cannon. Men fell with ease, occasionally taking their comrades with them if they were too close as electricity jumped between their metal plate armor like plates of a capacitor. Defenders scrambled to find the mystery assailant, but Tails was fast enough to take them all down before they could find him. He turned back to Saito's position, finding both Louise and Saito standing over a few bloody bodies, Louise holding the pink-bladed laser sword he'd given her earlier. "Oh yeah, I'd totally forgotten I had given her that…" he muttered to himself.

Saito and Louise ran over to join him, having finished off the defender lines. Tails ran up to the defender line and checked the street in both directions, but the Queen's men had broken through the gap Louise and Tails had made and were quickly charging down the side streets to flank the next defender walls. A well-dressed commander figure walked calmly through the defender line behind his soldiers, with a familiar blond-haired boy standing at his side.

"Guiche?!" Louise exclaimed in surprise.

"Louise! Why, it's a godsend to finally lay eyes on a female Academy student! How is Montmorency doing? Is she alright?" Guiche began, rushing up to the three.

"She's fine. Classes are going as usual, and Agnès is training us in hand-to-hand fighting, but that's about it. Is General Porsche your father?!" she asked, turning her attention to the older man.

The man gave a small bow in acknowledgement. "Yes, Guiche is my son. You are Miss Vallière, the wizard we sent out alongside the Dragon's Rainment you call 'Zero', correct? It's a pleasure to meet you," Porsche said, bowing once more.

Louise curtseyed in response, indicating to Saito and Tails. "These are my familiars, Saito and Miles. Saito is the pilot of the Zero, as you may know. Miles was the pilot of the other dragon, on the Airship Invasion day."

"I see," Porsche stated, stroking his greased pointy mustache. "And where is this Zero now?"

"It was unfortunately damaged during an engagement over the town, and is currently landed in the forest and awaiting repair," Tails explained, pointing in the rough direction where he thought it was landed. "Unfortunately, without my tools, it will be out of service for a while. Even with my tools, it will take some time."

"I see. This is of no matter. The Albians have very few reinforcements in this area. South Gotha was a major supply depot for the Albians, as the mountains here house one of the few Tristanian airship ports. The mountains also form a defensive wall from Gallia to the west, so it makes a naturally safe port for them. Scouts haven't been able to find any Albian reinforcements hiding in the mountain range, so we will take what prisoners we can and allow the rest to escape by airship back to Albion. Queen's orders on the latter half, unfortunately. I would prefer to kill all of these revolting scum myself, if I could."

Tails nodded, although he didn't necessarily agree with Porsche. Suddenly, a soldier ran up to the group, panting for breath. "What's the matter, man? Speak up," Porsche stated.

"It's the food stores, sir! They've been booby-trapped with explosives, and we can't enter. We think they plan to b-"

A loud explosion rocked the ground, fragments of wood and metal flying into the air as a massive cloud of smoke rose into the sky. "…burn it all," the soldier finished. "That was all the citizens of Gotha had, sir. The Albians forced the citizens at gunpoint to hoard the food into a single storage shed before they left. There were magic traps set all over the shed, sir."

Porsche pondered for a moment, then came to a snap decision. "I will report to the Queen about our situation. Most likely, she will authorize use of an airship to fly in new supplies until the agricultural practices are re-established. Tell Captain George to scan buildings for other magical traps. I do not want ANY injuries on this matter, do you understand?"

"Yessir, right away sir!" the messenger took off into the center of town, leaving the group in silence.

"Well, I suppose I should be off,” Porsche stated. “Guiche, you are welcome to stay and entertain our guests or accompany, but do be snappy in your decision.” The general turned on his heels, walking off toward the center of town.

Guiche stood firm, watching his father go with a stern face. "Good riddance! I've been forced to follow around him as an aide-de-camp for far too long. It grows tiresome," he said, letting loose a sigh of relief.

Louise tapped Guiche on the shoulder to catch his attention. "Wasn't George a knight before? When did he become captain?"

"Oh, right," Guiche said, running his hand through his hair. "The old captain died in an ambush on our way here. Died giving orders and swinging a sword to the very end, he did. A true hero that my father was very fond of. However, George has really done a great job so far, so he's held the position now with my father's blessing. He says I should always aspire to be like the two of them, but I don't fancy taking orders from my father any time soon."

Saito nodded, looking into the air as the smoke rose higher and higher. "I hope not many people were hurt in this. Is the Queen going to be here?"

"Yes, she came by horse with us. She's with the vanguard outside of town. We needed to secure the town before we can let her in, naturally," Guiche explained. "Anyways, I suppose I should be off. You can head to meet the Queen if you head along the main road out of town."

"Alright, thanks," Louise stated. "Let's go see her. For all we know, she may think we're dead."

Guiche gave Saito and Tails a solid farewell handshake, and a respectful bow for Louise. "Best of luck! Perhaps we'll see each other back at the Academy soon," he said.

"Yeah! See you then!" Saito said, turning to lead the way to the Queen's camp. Guiche watched patiently as the three disappeared behind a group of advancing soldiers with a bad feeling in the back of his throat. After a bit of self-reassurance, he pushed the feeling aside and took off after his father.


	56. Season 2 Chapter 22

**SEASON 2 CHAPTER 22**

After a successful, emotional visit with the Queen shortly after the city was deemed “clear”, Tails turned his attention to the town, helping out the villagers with reconstruction. An airship authorized by the Queen had brought in necessary supplies, ranging from a few days' worth of food and drink, as well as lumber, thatch, and tar for rebuilding any damaged properties. Tails was currently clearing away rubble of the storehouse that had been blown to smithereens, trimming up any salvageable lumber with his plasma cutter for reuse.

He was in the middle of hauling away a heavy lumber piece with the assistance of a Power Ring when the thunderous sound of flapping of wings caught his ear. Looking up, he caught sight of two dragons blocking the midday sun as they slowly descended to the ground, highlighted and obscured by the daylight glare. The dragons landed, revealing familiar blue and white colors he had been longing to see.

"Hey, Tabitha!" Tails called, turning to face Sylphid and the white dragon. Not watching where he was effortlessly waving the heavy lumber, he almost whacked a villager in the back of the head. He rested the lumber on one end and profusely apologized to the man before turning his attention back to Tabitha. "Why are you here?"

Julio butted in, hopping off of his white dragon. "We're both knights of the realm, so we follow orders of the castle. Chevaliers are what most people call us, as you probably have heard. Anyways, we're here on personal protection orders for Her Majesty, so here we are!"

Tails nodded. "Sounds good. Any idea how long we'll be here?" he asked, picking up the lumber again.

"Only a few days, until we get the town back on their feet. It's the Silver Pentecost festival today, so in theory a temporary ceasefire for the day should've gone into effect for everyone to celebrate. We sorta broke that, but there aren't any enemy reinforcements in the area, so no harm done in the end. After that, we help re-sow the fields that were destroyed by the Albians before their departure, and then pack up and go home."

Tails nodded in agreement. "What kind of festival is this Silver Pentecost thing?"

"Religious," Tabitha stated in her quiet voice, catching the attention of Julio at once.

"Well, you must be something special, Miles! She didn't speak a single word the whole way here, but becomes a chatterbox by comparison when you're around," Julio stated.

Tails merely shrugged – he knew what he would like to say, that Julio was a bit offputting, arrogant to say the least, but deemed it wise not to. “Anyways, if you could help lend a hand with the cleanup, that'd be great. This building got blown up by the Albians to torch the town's food supplies, but we're trying to salvage and rebuild it if possible."

Julio shrugged in return. "Why not? It's not as if I have anything to do, I suppose. Not that physical labor is my thing, but for the sake of charity."

"Good. You can start by taking this," Tails said, handing the long lumber bar to the blond-haired boy. Julio struggled to gain a serviceable handhold on it, staggering as he shifted the bar to its balance point on his shoulder. Seeing he was ready, Tails pointed toward a group of locals standing around near one corner of the ruined building "I need to keep cutting up the burned support beams for salvage, so if you can haul them away to wherever those workers tell you to, it'd be a big help. See ya in a bit." He left Tabitha to tend to the dragons as he walked back to his station to continue his cutting work.

"Real charmer, he is," Ring broadcasted into Tails' mind.

Tails rolled his eyes. "Yeah, no kidding. I'm surprised he was able to garner a crowd when he arrived at the Academy. Tells you just as much about the girls as it does about him, I suppose.”

* * *

 

The day passed slowly, with very little work being done other than clearing the old storage hall's foundations as the citizens transferred into party mode, coating the village with colorful lights and decorations. Tails helped decorate a few sections of streets with magic-powered torches that spewed bright flames of various colors, occasionally stopping to play with the village children when they began gleefully harassing him. As day slipped into evening, some unofficial announcement passed around that the party had started, with pubs across the town opening their doors to bring out caskets of various liquors that had been buried in their cellars for who knows how long.

Wandering the streets, Tails found Saito sitting in a bar, by himself for once. Tails took a seat next to him, flagging down the bartender for a mug of apple cider.

"What's up?" Tails asked, pausing to drain his glass. The foul taste of alcohol mixed in with the fruity drink brought a brief scowl to his face as he forced it down his throat. “Eugh, what a waste of good apples,” he thought.

"Nothing," Saito replied grumpily. "The Queen gave Louise a scouting job, but we can't use the plane. That's all."

Derf popped out of his sheath, ready to jump in on the conversation. "Let me rephrase that for you; he's pissed because Louise is going out with Julio on the mission tomorrow, because the plane is broken and they got into a fight over opinions about the war."

Tails let out a short, barking laugh. "Thanks, Derf. Clears things up quite a bit. Saito, I'd say don't worry about it. Julio’s a competent fighter, he’ll keep her safe. Besides, if he tries to do anything with her, she’ll probably just blow him up,” he added with a grin.

Saito nodded somberly. "…Yeah, I suppose. It just sickens me, the way she gets all stuck up about nobility and crap, just like Henry. She was against South Gotha taking in the Queen's soldiers because she thinks they might see us as their enemy for bringing the war to their doorstep."

"Yeah, I'll agree with you on that one, not much we could do about it," Tails agreed. "Well, everyone has their opinions, right? It's your job to teach her better than that. That's what friends do. Heck, I've learned TONS of stuff from my friends and enemies over the years. The X Tornado wouldn't be half of what it is today if it weren't for Chuck Thorndyke, the man I worked with for a while on Earth, and the Tornado is practically my baby."

Saito shook his head. "Perhaps. But some things I think are just too deeply engrained in who she is, that being one of them."

"You think so?" Tails asked, waving away the bartender as he tried to refill his mug. "I'd argue anyone can change. Alright, quick story time. There was a good friend of mine, named Shadow. He was a genetic experiment, made from the DNA of Sonic and some of his old enemies, the brainchild of a famous scientist named Gerald Robotnik. Ever since he was young, even before I was born, he had been subjected to the worst torture. In the end, his closest friend, Gerald’s granddaughter Maria, was shot, murdered in front of him by some government strike team out to shut down Gerald’s experiments. He was lied to many times about his past, controlled and manipulated in the worst of ways. However, he ultimately found his own way with a little help, and has since helped me and my friends save worlds many times over," Tails explained, images of the BioHazard and Black Doom filtering through his mind. "Although I don't think I can ever forgive him for trying to attack Cosmo, another friend of mine, I can at least understand his reasons and help him be a better person, right?"

Saito nodded, looking up at Tails. "Yeah, I suppose so. Thanks, Tails. So, what are you up to for the evening?"

Tails shrugged. "I'll probably go play tag with the village kids, maybe read a book. Nothing big. I might try to get to bed earlier so I can get up and go help out restoring the fields tomorrow, so we can get out of here faster. Anyways, I just wanted to drop in and say hi. I'll see you later."

Saito turned to watch as Tails left, slipping out into the streets among the busy people. "Do you really think he's right, Derf?" he asked quietly.

"I dunno. It seems reasonable. Why don't you give it a try?" Derf replied, slipping back into his sheath again.

* * *

 

Tails wandered the streets for another hour, weaving through the crowded streets as merchants hawked their wares from the shops on either side. Children darted through the forest of adults, waving pinwheels and other festival toys as they ran and screamed with joy. Tails managed to borrow a bit of money from one of the construction workers he’d met earlier in the day and bought himself some soapapilla-esque fried bread from a merchant, the buns sticky with a honey glaze. He munched on his dessert in silence as he made his way down the street, tossing the empty bag into a pile of garbage stacked up in the alleyway next to a restaurant when he had finished off the treat. He counted the few coins he had left and pocketed them in the bottom of Ring’s sheath, deciding that the remaining change wouldn't be enough to buy anything major.

Night was beginning to fall, but the torches kept things well lit in the streets. Tails ducked into a small alley and launched himself into the air, quickly hovering up to the flat rooftop of the adjacent building with his tails. Touching down on the flat rooftop, he picked up a small wooden plank and set it against a small pile of bricks that were left out on the rooftop to create a small chair back, taking a seat against the inclined plank.

"The stars sure are pretty, here. No chemical pollution or anything," Tails thought to himself.

"Yeah, no clouds or anything tonight. Not ideal for viewing the stars, though, since the moons should be full tonight," Ring broadcasted into his mind.

"How do you know?"

"I overheard it from a man while you were in the bar. Quite the astronomer, he was."

Tails kicked off his shoes to let them air out a bit, getting comfortable to sit for a while. "Do you know any of the major constellations here? I don't think it's the same as any of the other worlds I've visited."

"Yeah, I know a few. Hold your head still for a bit, so I can get my bearings. There's a bit of lag between what you see and what gets sent to your short-term memory, so that makes things harder. Alright, let's see… yeah, look to your right about ten degrees, just above and to the right of the lesser moon, and you'll see the Hebriades, which looks like a ladle… And above that, the Pellacese, shaped like two halves of a broken heart, and…"

* * *

 

Tails' astronomy lesson went on late into the night, observing many odd shapes and interesting histories of constellation names. Suddenly, an explosion rocked the air, followed by screaming and the sounds of heavy footsteps and jangling armor. Tails crawled to the edge of his building and peeked into the streets, now dim as the magic-fueled torches ran low. Tails could see bodies, many armored bodies with glowing purple eyes jogging up and down the street with swords and axes drawn. Another explosion erupted more toward the center of town, striking a large central building by the upper floors.

"Wasn't the Queen in there?!" Tails thought, his mind racing. Slamming his feet into his shoes, he took off in a rocket-propelled glide, leaping along the roughly even two-story rooftops as he rushed for the freshly-struck building. He flew through the open hole in the room, witnessing the blaze of burning tapestries and rugs among what appeared to be an impromptu throne room. The Queen was still seated in her chair, with Agnès thrown over her in a desperate act of protection. Tails thought he could hear screams of pain from the blaze, but he couldn’t see anything but rubble under the intense blaze.

Agnès rose from the chair, pulling Henrietta to her feet. "Miles, help me get the Queen to the airships! We need to move, NOW!"

Tails nodded, chasing after Agnès and Henrietta as they sprinted for the door. Henrietta was still looking back at the fire with tears in her eyes, but was soon forced to focus on running. Tails advanced ahead of the two to get every door open before their approach, bursting out into the cold open streets after flinging open the final double doors. Several of the Queen's loyal men had already surrounded the door, scanning for opponents.

"What's going on?" Henrietta cried, her face red with tears. "Why are they attacking us?"

"It's our own men, Milady," one of the knights stated. Tails recognized George with his bushy face and his massive pike, level and at the ready. "Some mind-controlling potion. You can see their eyes glowing purple if they're under the effects. Someone must have spiked the water supply with it, as all us liquor-drinkers are fine."

Agnès stepped forward, her handgun at the ready. "We need to get the Queen to safety. The airship port is nestled in the mountains, so let's get a move on. Go!" She looked around, checking for any other soldiers nearby. "Shit, where are my Musketeers…" she thought.

* * *

 

Saito tried to rise from his seat on the bed, but Siesta wouldn't let go. She hardly had been able to sit down and talk with him after finishing her work aboard the Queen’s airship, and was desperate to keep him. "Something strange is going on outside. I hear swords, which can't be good."

"Saito… You'll be going back to Miss Vallière's side, won't you?" Siesta mumbled, her eyes lined with tears waiting to fall. "If that's the case, please take this," she said, pressing a small bottle into Saito's hand. "In case Miss Vallière wants you to do something that would harm you, please use this and return to me. I can't stand the thought of you getting hurt because of her."

Saito stared wide-eyed back at her, in shock at the thought. He snapped out of his daze, giving her a short nod. "I will. Thank you, Siesta." He bolted for the door, flying down the hallway and out into the open.

The central square near the hotel he'd been housed in was in total chaos, with civilians and soldiers running every which way. Some of the Queen's soldiers were fighting amongst themselves, swords clashing as they threw their might into every blow, as if they were fighting to the death.

"Shit, I have NO clue what's going on. Where the hell is Louise?" Saito thought. A woman ran right past him in a panic, but a soldier stepped out from an alleyway and struck her down, lodging the tip of his sword in the woman's back. Saito watched in horror as the soldier, rather, some purple-eyed husk of a man drew the blood-stained steel and turned to face him. Without a moment’s thought, he drew Derflinger and laid the man out with a blow to his head with the back edge of Derf's blade, sending the man sprawling with his rune-assisted strength. He sprinted along the edge of the square, checking every side-street for any sign of Louise or Julio, his fear intensifying with every empty alleyway. Finally, a voice rung out in his ear:

"SAITOOOOOO!"

Like magic, he quickly homed in on the location of the voice, guessing it was a couple alleys further. He could see a single magic-affected soldier standing at the entrance of the alleyway, sword drawn to engage some hidden opponent. Saito sprinted toward the man, slicing the man clean in half with a brutal baseball-style swing as he came to a stop in front of the alley. Louise stood just before him, still in shock from her impending death.

Stowing Derflinger, he stepped forward and embraced her deeply, taking a moment to enjoy the smell of her perfumed hair. "Oh thank god you're all right!" he said, holding her tight. He stepped back, arms still on her shoulder as he stared into her eyes. "We need to go, like right now. The Queen is most likely headed to the airship as we speak, and we need to get you on board. Then I'll come back to find Tails if he hasn't already headed that way himself."

Louise nodded, tears streaming down her face. The two took off through the streets, headed for the airdock.

"Wait, Saito!" Louise called, tugging back on his arm. "We need to get Tabitha. She was at a nearby church, doing some Chevalier prayer stuff. We can't leave her!"

Saito nodded. "Where is it?"

"Take a right up here, it should be at the end of the street!"

The two stopped at the street corner, letting Saito take a peek around the corner to ensure the roads were clear. Only one soldier stumbled through the street, disappearing into some nameless alley ahead. With a nod, Saito sprinted from cover up the street with Louise at his side to the church at the far end.

Reaching the door, he found it unlocked as he yanked it. Like Louise had said, Tabitha was sitting in one of the front pews, her head bowed and her staff set aside. He jogged over to her and grabbed her by the shoulder, catching her attention.

"Hey, Tabitha, we need to go. Some revolt's broken out, and the whole town is in chaos. We need to get to the airship, or at least get out of here on Sylphid."

Tabitha nodded, looking back at Louise. Louise was blushing, her eyes slightly moist with tears. "Actually, Saito," she spoke up, rubbing the center-aisle carpet with her shoe, "That wasn't the only reason we came here. I met up with Agnès and Julio when the revolt started. She gave me orders to stay behind and use my Void Magic to help fight…"

"Fight?!” Saito exclaimed in shock. “What the hell are you talking about, Louise? It's a bunch of our own men! We can get them back to normal, but right now they're really fucking things up out there! And you want to nuke the town from orbit?"

"That's not all!" Louise cried. "Agnès told me a scout said there was a hidden army outside, blocking the road out of town. She broke off to round up her soldiers, and Julio went to protect the Queen… Saito, I want to marry you before I die!"

Saito was floored. His jaw dropped. "…what?" he managed to get out, trying to understand what he had just heard. After the full implication of her statement hit him, he began to tear up. "Louise… Yes. Just yes."

Louise stepped up to the altar alongside Saito. "Tabitha is a princess, so she can officiate it. Right, Tabitha?" Louise asked. Tabitha nodded silently, stepping up to the central altar between the two. Louise and Saito joined hands, with Tabitha resting her hand on top.

Tabitha bowed her head, with Saito and Louise watching closely. After a moment of silence, Tabitha raised her head. "You are married," she mumbled, adjusting her glasses.

Saito continued to stare, as if expecting more. "Well, that was anticlimactic," he said, rubbing the back of his head.

Derf popped out of his sheath once more. "Just kiss, you knucklehead!"

Louise obliged, leaning in on her tiptoes to kiss Saito for what seemed like an eternity. Saito embraced her as he shared the kiss, enjoying it just as much as he'd anticipated. Finally, he broke off, looking around the room. "Do we have something to drink? We should have a toast."

Tabitha pointed to a bottle of wine, with two empty glasses sitting next to it on a far table. Saito walked over and popped the cork on the bottle, pouring each glass one at a time. Before setting down the wine bottle, to make it look like was still pouring, he slipped the contents of the potion Siesta had given him into the glass on the right. Dropping the empty vial into his front hoodie pocket, he set the wine bottle down and took the two glasses back to the altar, handing the laced glass to Louise. He held out his own glass, indicating that Louise should do the same.

"To a good future, no matter what's in store!" he stated joyfully.

Louise nodded with a smile on her face, tapping her wineglass to his with a resounding ring. The two downed their glasses in short work, setting them on the altar when they were finished.

Almost at once, Louise crumpled to the floor, fast asleep from the potion. Saito gently picked her up, setting her on the front pew. "Make sure she gets on board the airship, whether she wakes up or not. There’s no way I’m letting her risk her life out there. If she’s right about those reinforcements… there’s no guarantee I could keep her safe,” he said. For a brief moment, he thought about what he had just said, and realized – there wasn’t even a guarantee he could keep himself safe. One guy with a sword couldn’t hope to equate to Louise’s magic, but he had to try.

Tabitha nodded silently, adjusting her grip on Louise. She handed Saito two bottles, each containing a pink flower. "Give it to Tails," she said, pushing up her glasses. Saito gave a solemn nod, starting for the door. She watched silently as Saito strode for the door, drawing Derflinger as he stepped into the cold night air with a wide, warm smile on his face.


	57. Season 2 Chapter 23

**SEASON 2 CHAPTER 23**

Tails hacked through the final soldier, sheathing Ring to give his arms a rest. The airdock stood just before them, with streams of civilians rushing for safety within the deep cargo holds of the airship.

"Is that all of them?" Tails called out to George, scanning the landscape.

"I think so! All the ones in town seemed to be going somewhere, out of town by the land route. Maybe they're going to try building a defense there? Good thing they forgot about the airdock!"

Tails nodded, but his attention was immediately captured by a streaking shadow on the ground. He traced the shadow's movement, catching sight of Sylphid gliding for the airdock up the hill from him. He took off toward the airdock, skating up the hill as fast as he could to meet up with her. He found Tabitha standing in front of the ship, walking up the boarding ramp with an unconscious Louise at her side.

"What's wrong with her? Where's Saito?" Tails asked nervously. Tabitha handed off Louise to one of the men on the upper deck of the airship and jogged back down the ramp. She stared at Tails for a moment, then reached forward to embrace him.

Tails was caught by surprise, but politely returned the embrace. "Tabitha, where's Saito? Is he… going to fight the remaining drugged soldiers?"

Tabitha nodded. Tails broke loose from the embrace, turning to dash down the hill.

"Wait!" a familiar voice called, stopping Tails in his tracks. He turned to see Headmaster Osmond standing beside a cargo-loading door of the massive airship, resting against a large, canvas-covered object. "I'm sorry I couldn't come to see you in town, Miles, but I was busy with paperwork. Paperwork for this, to be exact," he said, patting the canvas-coated thing. Tails ran over to him and yanked the canvas off, his eyes flying wide at the sight.

"You'll be up against more than just those controlled soldiers, Miles. I don't know if this is at all of use to you, but it looked similar to something we've seen in action many years ago, and believe it might be of use," Headmaster Osmond continued. "If you… uh… don't bring it back in one piece, it's quite alright. We have plenty more things like these in the vault."

Tails circled around and yanked the door open, hopping into the driver's seat. "Yeah, this'll do perfectly," he said. He found the keys sitting in the ignition, ready to go. "Let's go kick some tail!"

* * *

 

Saito was kneeling on the hill, his head lowered in thought as he leaned on Derf, stabbed into the grass in front of him.

"Do you really think we have a chance, Derf?"

"Not gonna lie, this is looking pretty grim. But that's what a Gandalfr's for, right? We need to buy Louise time to escape."

Saito nodded. "I just wish it didn't have to end this way… Derf?"

"Yeah?"

"Do you feel anything when you kill… or, rather, are used to kill?"

"Partner… I'm just a sword. Talking or not, you're the one doing the swinging. I've been used to kill many people over my lifetime. If it ever bothered me, it's long gone. All I can say is, you're the reason Louise and all the others on that ship will live. Keep that in mind when you make your decision."

Saito nodded solemnly. Now was not the time to be questioning his morality, he thought. "One final thing, Derf. Are you ready?"

"You're goddamn right I am," Derf replied. "Let's get 'em."

Saito drew Derf from the ground and sprinted forward, ignoring his impending doom. As if he were dying, memories of his time with Louise flashed before his eyes, blocking out any thought of his future, or his present as he rushed forward to greet the sprawling army before him. Arrows whistled through the air as he was finally spotted by the enemy, but Saito simply brushed them aside with a stroke of Derflinger's blade, the power of his Gandalfr runes coursing through him and enhancing his senses. He leaped into the front lines, crashing down amongst a the first soldiers that had turned to face him.

He swept his blade in a circular motion, his Gandalfr rune glowing brightly as he spun. A massive gale of wind erupted from Derflinger's blade, clearing a hundred-foot circle as the gust sent armored opponents flying in every direction. While his opponents were blinded by dust kicked up by the gale, he rushed forward toward the heart of the army, elbowing his first opponent's helmet with such force that the helmet crumpled in like paper. He knocked aside a blade stroke of an advancing soldier and retaliated with a roundhouse kick, weaving between his approaching opponents as he dealt fatal counters to their ill-timed moves. Suddenly, the layer of melee fighters backed off, revealing a wall of magicians.

"Partner, up front!" Derf called, bringing Saito's attention to his new opponents. A fireball caught Saito head-on, but Derflinger managed to dispel it before it caught his clothes on fire. Saito rolled back from the recoil of the blow, but landed on his feet as he primed himself to block further blows. He swiped two fireballs out of the air, absorbing them with Derflinger's blade as he advanced. Seeing the futility of their attacks, the magicians backed off to allow a wall of archers to move to the front, unleashing a torrent of arrows in his general direction. Saito's blade became a blur as he swung to block the arrows, smashing them out of the air with Gandalfr-rune-enhanced speed.

"I can't let this be the end! Not without Louise!" Saito thought. A few arrows began to slip through his defense, nicking his leg and scratching his face as he lost his concentration. Suddenly, the deluge of arrows stopped as the enemies fell silent, as if trying to hear some sound carried on the light midnight breeze.

Saito focused on the silence, listening closely. He could make out some barely audible noise in the distance, what sounded like a muted roar. He turned to face the town, looking for the sound among the hills. A bright light appeared on the main road, rushing toward him with a cloud of red dust illuminated trailing behind it.

The white Ford F-150 came to a skidding stop next to Saito, spewing dirt everywhere as its large tires dug into the soft dirt. Tails' head popped out of the driver's side window with a shit-eating grin. "Hop in!" he said.

Saito nodded, clambering over the side of the pickup bed wall. A massive DShKM fifty-caliber machine gun greeted him, the deadly weapon gleaming in the moonlight on its anti-air mount. He grabbed for the controls as the truck lurched forward, picking up speed as Tails pulled away from the army. Saito reached for a small window in the back of the cab, sliding it open.

"Hey, where are we going? I'm not going back to the airship if it's still here!" he called into the cab. Tails looked up into the rearview mirror with determination in his eyes. He hit the brakes and jerked the steering wheel hard, putting the truck into a tight turn to face the army. "Fine, if you want it that way, we'll give it to 'em!" he called.

Saito nodded with a grin, reaching into the pocket of his sweater. "I almost forgot! Here, Tabitha wanted you to have this!" he said, tossing a bottled pink flower to Tails. "Louise gave me one, too. Good luck, I think."

Tails nodded, taking in the glowing pink blossom’s warm light for a moment before jamming the glass bottle into the truck’s cupholder.

Saito slammed the window shut and reached for the DShKM, ready to engage. At a single touch with the deadly machine gun, his Gandalfr powers kicked in, giving him an intimate familiarity with the gun, as if he were shaking an old friend's hand. He gave the charging rod a brisk pull, chambering the first round of the belt that stretched out of a large tin on the floor. He flicked off the safety and pulled the trigger, rupturing the silence with the weapon’s earsplitting chatter. The deadly green tracers zipped across the night sky, snapping out a staccato rhythm as the bullets scythed through the army ahead. He held on for dear life as the truck lurched forward, charging straight toward the enemy. The enemy army grew closer and closer, a glowing mass of torches and charging fireball spells. A blue shield enveloped the truck as it claimed its first victim, slamming into the ranks of the shieldbearing soldiers and punching a hole in their defensive line, flying over the bodies. Saito could see blood spurting out from under the truck as it rolled over dead bodies, squishing heads and arms with ease from sheer weight. Not once did he let up on the trigger, sweeping the army all around him with withering gunfire as the truck proceeded to slam down more and more men, littering the field with bodies as it carved its way through the formation. Arrows and fireballs bounced off of the blue shield enveloping the truck, not a scratch of damage on anything.

Suddenly, the gun stopped. The chain of cartridges had run dry, the tin empty and the bed of the truck coated with hundreds of loose spent shells. Saito reached for the window and slid it open, pointing to the defunct weapon. "Tails, we're all out! What now?"

"I didn't think that far ahead!" Tails called back, flicking on the windshield wipers to clear away the thick spray of blood on the shield. Suddenly, a cannon boomed in the distance, followed by the shrieking wail of a flying cannonball. The heavy iron projectile slammed into the shielded wall of the pickup bed, causing the whole shield to flicker as the truck skidded sideways under the impact.

"Partner, I can't keep this up under fire like that! You need to do a better job dodging!" Ring called.

"I'm working on it! This thing isn't built for speed!" Tails yelled back, jamming the gas pedal to the floor as the truck hit a soldier-free stretch. A battery of cannons lay dead ahead at the rear of the army, soldiers scrambling to load and aim the massive artillery guns. Tails pulled hard on the steering wheel as he shifted from left to right in a serpentine motion, trying to throw off the cannoneers' aim. Cannonballs shot past the truck as it approached, slamming into walls of infantry behind.

"They're hitting their own men!" Tails thought, looking into his left-side mirror. Suddenly, the mirror disappeared as a cannonball slammed into it, penetrating the shield with enough velocity to smash the mirror off of the truck. Tails panicked and pulled the steering wheel a little too hard, causing the truck to spin out. He could see as Saito was thrown out of the truck bed, tossed into the grass a ways away.

Tails held the gas down, causing the truck to lose traction temporarily as the wheels spun in the dirt, trying to regain purchase. He ducked in the driver's seat as another shot whizzed by the truck, the deafening shriek of the flying shell scaring him half to death. The truck regained its grip and sped off for the cannon battery, finally closing the distance. Tails let Ring's shield drop as he drove the truck between two cannons, mowing down two loaders. The unshielded deer grille buckled under the impact, splattering another coating of red blood against the windshield. An arrow found its way through the coated windshield, shattering the glass and blasting Tails with shards, slicing his face and arms. He managed to catch a view through the open gap of the windshield, facing the waiting enemy.

"Oh, shit!" Tails thought. He grabbed his flower bottle, flung open the door and jumped out, rolling along the grassy field as the truck continued head-on into a formation of waiting mages, staves at the ready. The truck exploded violently as the barrage of fireballs made contact, the flaming chassis sliding to a stop a ways away. Tails stood up and drew Ring and his T-Buster, jamming his flower bottle in the empty sheath as he sprinted back to the cannons. A few slashes from the plasma cutter lopped off the barrels of the cannons, shaking the ground with every cut barrel.

He had made it through a significant number of cannons when the mages had finally received orders to sacrifice the remaining cannons. Fireballs impacted the powder stores at the base of the cannons, igniting the wooden barrels. The shockwave of the chained explosions blinded Tails, flinging him back as a dark cloud rose into the air, blocking the moons.

"Partner! get up, damnit!" Ring broadcasted into his mind. Tails quickly got to his feet and turned to face his new opponents, trapped between the massive blaze behind him and a ring of soldiers in front.

"Why the hell did I sign up for this!?!" Tails cried, unloading rapid blasts of T-Buster bolts into the group. More soldiers proceeded to jump over their fallen comrades, closing in on Tails by their sheer numbers. In a final desperate attempt, he made a full-tilt dash toward his opponents, launching into the air with his tails. He cleared the gap between Saito and himself, landing just in time to stop a knight from ambushing his friend with a falling slice from Ring.

"You holding up ok?" Saito grunted, catching an opponent's blade in a head-on clash. He shoved the knight away, using the extended reach of Derf's blade to gouge his tip through the man's waist between armor plates.

"Fine, I guess!" Tails called back, slicing a man in half with his plasma cutter. For some mysterious reason, the assault of swordsmen halted, leaving the two standing in the center of a ring of open field, surrounded my more soldiers on every side. The edge of the ring lit up with charging fireballs as mages closed in.

"Ring, shield please!" Tails cried. The blue bubble popped into life around the two, just in time to intercept a wall of fireballs. The shield flickered under the blows, allowing some streaking arrows among the mixed hailstorm to get through.

"Fuck!" Saito cried, catching Tails' attention. An arrow that had made it through tore at his other leg, leaving him struggling to stand. Thankfully, the arrow had only glanced off of the side of his knee, rather than sticking into the flesh.

Tails grimaced, trying to think of a plan. In a desperate attempt, he grabbed a hold of Saito's arm and kicked his rocket shoes into full throttle, punching through the blue shield as he took to the skies.

"We've done our job, Saito. They're probably gone by now. We need to bail," Tails called to Saito, who was holding on for dear life.

And then disaster struck.

The archers had roughly tracked the yellow blur, managing to strike Tails on one of his tails. The two dropped slowly as the rocket shoes failed to support the double load. The two crash-landed on the green grass in front of the remaining army, exposed to fire. Tails got to his feet, ready to face the hailstorm, but was too late as a single arrow streaked past him, piercing Saito through the chest.

Saito let out a blood-spewing cough and a groan, staring at the green and white arrow that protruded from his chest. He looked over to Tails, his eyelids drooping shut.

"Take care of… Louise for me…" he whispered, blood leaking from his mouth. As his eyes closed, his body disappeared in a flash of light, leaving behind his pink flower bottle and the bloodied green and white arrow.

The world slowed to a standstill as Tails rose to his feet, drawing the arrow from the ground. Enveloped with rage, his body had turned pitch black, an aura of dark energy emanating from his body as his anger focused the Chaos energy near him in the universe.

The barrage of projectiles had resumed, but they were slowed down to a crawling pace. Tails weaved silently through the forest of arrows and flaming orbs, his eyes scanning the sky and army before him. He found a small sweet spot where no arrows seemed to be headed and took a moment to stare along the firing line, looking for his target.

One archer caught his attention, frozen in the process of nocking back another green and white arrow. Tails strolled over to the man and observed his features silently. The blond, pointy-eared man had a determined face, something that inspired Tails in a sick and twisted way. He took the bow from the man's frozen hands and snapped it in half, winding the string around his neck and tying it tight. He finished the deed by jamming Saito's bloody arrow through the man's knee, just above the kneecap. He took one final look at the man's immovable face before he snapped back to reality, the world moving back toward its normal speed. The man collapsed in place, slowly choking as his hands flew to his neck, scrabbling to untie his own bowstring from his throat.

Soldiers nearby backed away in fright, staring at the black monster they had created that had seemingly materialized next to them. Tails withdrew another colored arrow from the choking archer's quiver, giving it a Chaos-energy-strengthened throw through the archer's lines. Like a railgun, the arrow ripped through the firing line of archers, punching clean through any armor they were wearing.

Tails turned his attention to the remaining soldiers before him, if they could even be called “remaining” – all their destruction had hardly amounted to a tenth of the enemy’s total strength, he guessed. He raised Ring in his left hand instinctually, as if guided by the dark energy that filled him. The blade glowed red like a hot iron, emitting a blinding light as electricity arced along the blade. With a rippling crack that filled the air, a red flash erupted from the Power Ring embedded in Ring's blade, enveloping him in a powerful shockwave that sent his enemies flying like a rag doll in all directions; Chaos Blast was what Shadow had called the technique. Tails could feel his strength flagging with each use as the Chaos energy in the area was drained. As he let loose the last of his energy, he could see the dirt and smoke of his blasts rising into the air, obscuring the blue and pink moons above.

With a bloodcurdling cry of anger, Tails let loose the last of his Chaos energy in one final blast. Pain finally began to register in his mind; he could feel his cuts, his bruises, burns and broken bones. Ring and his T-Buster burned his hands as the metal objects reached crazy temperatures at the epicenter of so many explosions. Without Chaos energy to support his weakened body, he fell to the ground, staring at the sky with weak eyes. He could see the devastation around him out of the corner of his eyes, watching as the remaining soldiers readied magic spells and arrows. The world slowed once more, although for a different reason, as the spells flew into the air, lighting the dirty air with a dingy orange light of their flames.

"How did I do?" Tails thought to Ring, too weak to speak. He used the last of his energy to reach into his sheath and, with great effort, pulled the cracked, soot-stained glass bottle onto his chest, the pink flower glowing brightly. He was surprised it had somehow survived, but it didn't matter now.

"I would guess about three thousand, maybe more, maybe less," Ring broadcasted back, his metal talking piece welded together to his blade.

"Not good enough, I suppose. Damn."

"Well, better luck next time. You made me proud. Woulda made Tabitha and Louise proud, too."

"I wouldn't think so. I can't be proud of what I become when I'm like that. I've seen Sonic like that once. It was horrifying. I never want to be like that again."

"Well, at least you put it to good use here. Maybe we'll see each other again?"

Tails nodded. "Yeah. Maybe. Do you know what the afterlife is like?"

"I have no clue, partner. I hope it's good for you."

"Thanks."

And then, with a brief roar and then silence, the world disappeared.


	58. Season 2 Chapter 24

**SEASON 2 CHAPTER 24**

The campus was silent as Henrietta slowly dismounted from her carriage, walking up the aisle with her eyes level and focused on Osmond. Louise and Tabitha stood on either side of the old man, staring back at the Queen.

Did he really die?

Tabitha pushed up her glasses which had slipped down the bridge of her nose while her head was bowed. "I don't know," she thought back to herself. "It's hard to believe that he did. Why didn't he fly away? I can't be sure until I confirm it myself. The flower means nothing."

She looked over to Louise, who was now in tears as the Queen approached. The Queen was also red in the face, her eyes brimming as she did her best to hold her composure. "I don't know why I'm not crying right now," Tabitha thought to herself. "Surely this is something of equivalent emotional importance to when Mother was drugged. Maybe it's not? Did I actually like Tails, or was that just some sequence of events?"

Headmaster Osmond held out his arms to receive the weeping queen, with Louise joining in on the hug. "I suppose I should, too," Tabitha thought. She held out her arms and wrapped them around the group as far as they would go, listening quietly to the sobbing of the two girls. "I probably look terribly insensitive to them, not crying like they are. Perhaps I should try to hurt myself to force a tear?"

Tabitha let go as the group hug dissolved, the queen regaining composure as she made ready for her speech. Headmaster Osmond shook his head lightly, stating that he would say the speech on her behalf. Henrietta nodded with a forced smile and took her position between Louise and the old man, staring out into the crowd. Headmaster Osmond cleared his throat and began on some silly speech, that we had lost many valuable lives over the course of the war, but that life carries on. Some sentimental garbage that was only half true, as Tabitha knew that the two of the Academy students that had died were two boys she'd never known too well.

"That's not true, I suppose. I did know Tails and Saito pretty well, although I didn't try to be friends as much as I should have," Tabitha thought. "Besides, those other boys that died were only first-years that were flunking their classes. They hardly had the skills necessary to survive the classroom, much less actual war."

Headmaster Osmond's speech droned on and on, inspiring many of the women and a few of the weaker men to tears. "Perhaps they are dead. Does this make it official? Do I give up trying to confirm it myself, and trust the flower? I don't want that. Some part of me doesn't care, tells me that I should go back to my books, but some part of me wants to beg that they are alive. Like they were important to me, like Mother. More than a close friend, in a sense."

Professor Osmond finished the speech, leaving the groups of students standing in silence, waiting for some big finish from the Queen. She simply stood still, her eyes still focused on the path ahead of her that lead away from the Academy. Tabitha decided to ditch the pity party, walking off to the workshop where Colbert and Tails used to work.

She climbed down the ladder into the underground compartment, looking over all of Tails' old stuff in the dim yellow light of the Power Rings in the ceiling above. The workbench was as dirty as ever, with only her dead bottled flower standing tall among the pile of wrenches, grenades, and half-finished projects. She walked over to the X Tornado, running her hand along the golden exterior as she recalled memories of her space flight with her fox-like Familiar. "Maybe I am sad. This seems like the kind of thing someone would do if they were unhappy, or in grief,' she thought.

"Well, maybe he is dead. But that doesn't mean you shouldn't enjoy your happy memories with him," a voice rang out in the darkness. Tabitha drew her handgun, waving it around the room as she scanned for opponents.

Suddenly, the slide racked itself, chambering a fresh round and ejecting an old one. The unfired cartridge clattered to the metal floor. "It's me, Ring. You know, Tails' sword buddy? Yeah, I took over your handgun here to drop by and say hi."

Tabitha felt her heartrate increase. "Alive or dead?" she asked quietly, hardly breaking the silence.

Ring let out an audible sigh. "No, he's very much dead, last I saw him. I warped away his body before the enemy obliterated it, leaving it next to Saito's somewhere in a forest. I left Derf to watch over them as I jumped from weapon to weapon to get back here. Man, you shoulda seen some of those farmer's faces when I took over their tools! Hahahah!... As a side note, Tails and Saito did really well in holding off the army. Musta' killed about seven, maybe eight thousand total, give or take. You should be proud of your familiar."

Tabitha lowered her handgun, returning her attention to the X Tornado as she set aside her staff and climbed up on top of the machine. "I don't think I want to be proud of a dead friend," she thought.

"Yeah, I know, but it's all you can do now. No wishing can bring him back to life. Don’t even entertain the thought, or you’ll drive yourself mad," Ring broadcasted into her mind.

Tabitha nodded, taking in the view of the shattered glass that coated the pilot's seat with a glimmering layer of crystalline shards. She felt her heart rate fall back to normal, the excitement of any possibility that her hero had avoided his fate long gone. Hopping down from the Tornado, she picked up the ejected bullet from the ground, one of her last eight, and ejected the magazine, replacing the bullet in the magazine with a slight push. The magazine snapped back into place with a muted click, giving her some reassurance in the device. "At least it still works. Hopefully I won't ever need more than one, if that," she thought to herself as she stowed the handgun in the pocket of her cloak.

Suddenly, a burst of blue light filled the room, reflecting off of the polished metal walls and golden fuselage of the Tornado. Tabitha turned to see her bottled flower on the cluttered workbench glowing bright once more, the the cerulean blossom standing motionless as it reached for the sky in its glass cage. Grabbing her staff, she walked over slowly, cautiously, as if a mis-step would crush the seeming illusion before her. Taking the bottle in her hand, she stared deeply at the pulsing blue glow as if it were a foreign text, asking a silent question.

Setting aside her staff, she drew her handgun again to see if Ring had anything to say, but he remained silent – likely, he had already hopped away from it while her attention was drawn away. Her heart skipped a beat as she stashed her handgun, snatched up her staff under her arm and bolted for the ladder, flower in hand.

She stepped outside into the empty lawn. The crowd of students had dissipated, and food being served in the dining hall. Jogging over to the front gate, she scanned the horizon for any sign of movement, adjusting her glasses. Her heart rate slowly dropped once more as time passed, the horizon yielding nothing more than the distant mountains and woods she expected.

Tabitha heard someone let out a small gasp and turned to see Louise, clutching her blue flower in a bottle. Her hands were shaking as she stared at the glowing blue flower, the light radiating intensely as if to share a similar message. Tabitha held her bottle high, staring at it curiously as if it were asking some question in an alien language. "No resurrection magic… right?"

Louise took off out into the open field, rushing toward some invisible object she and only she saw. Then, Tabitha saw it, too. Two shapes on the horizon. Yellow and blue.

"Could it be the Ring of Andvari that attacked us in Gotha, and now here?" Tabitha thought. Her heart was hammering in her chest, but she couldn’t fathom why…

* * *

 

Saito rushed forward to give Louise a hug, kissing once more on the dirt road. Tails strolled to a stop behind him, watching the two lovebirds make out. Glancing beyond his blue-clad friend, he saw Tabitha slowly walking toward them and gave her a friendly wave and a smile.

"Hey, Tabitha. Long time no see, right?" Tails asked, rubbing the back of his head. He was carrying his red arm cannon under one arm, the device clearly beaten to a pulp for some mysterious reason.

After a moment of thinking, Tabitha leaned forward, planting a kiss right on his lips, however short it was. It caught Tails by surprise, causing him to drop his weapon and hug her back, holding her tight. "I'm sorry I left you like that. We should have come home, but we couldn't make it," he said into her ear.

Tails could feel water on his shoulder, the salt stinging an open wound that hadn't quite healed on the walk home. He didn't care though, because he was home again.

Ring slid out of his sheath, his charred, discolored blade shining brightly. "Man, you two ladies shoulda seen your men go! They were all over it out there. You should be proud of them. Make sure to send that elf lady a nice present for saving them."

Derf slid out of Saito's sheath, letting out a quick metallic whistle. "Yeah, man, she was smokin'! That was a treat for Saito and Tails in itself. You'd think heaven came to earth," he said. Saito melted at the thought of the elf lady, a grin crossing his face as he relived the memory in his mind.

Louise pushed herself away from Saito, her head down. Her hands were balled into fists, shaking with rage. "Saito… who might this elf lady be?... Who have you been messing around with while playing dead, you DOG!" she yelled, drawing her wand. Saito instinctively turn to run but didn't make it far before an explosion sent him sprawling into the ground, tumbling in the soft grass. Tails watched as Saito immediately hopped to his feet and broke into a dead sprint for the Academy, seeking the safety of its stone walls. Tails was choking from laughter when he turned back to face Tabitha, her face as impassive as stone.

"Prepare to die," she muttered, leveling her staff at the Mobian.

"Hey, what's wrong with you?!' Tails exclaimed. He backed off slowly, picking up his damaged T-Buster as he backpedaled. Without a word of chanting, a hailstorm of frosty snowballs erupted from Tabitha's staff, slamming him to the ground from the sheer volume of projectiles. He scrambled to his feet and took the air by tail, evading her barrage with a smile as he made his way to the Academy, home sweet home.

* * *

 

**Author's Note:**

We're halfway done with this edited version! As a thank-you for sticking around, here's a quick little bit of "bonus content": my first attempt at creating art for the fiction! You can find it here, http://i.imgur.com/EmEyUID.jpg. It was made by rigging up the important parts of the scene (Tails, the truck, the foreground, Saito) in Garry's Mod with available models, then printing it out, mounting it to a clear plastic clipboard and tracing by hand with a flashlight as a backlight. Then, I  added a simple background by hand to complete the look! I'm happy the way it turned out, although I can't help but feel like the moons still look like a pair of sunny-side-up eggs after trying to add a "glowing aura" to them. Can't be perfect on the first try, though!


	59. Season 3 Chapter 1

Tails had been hard at work in the workshop since yesterday morning with only sleeping hours not spent at his bench. His T-Buster laid out before him on the workbench in many pieces, parts strewn across a large paper mat. He was poring over a specific module that was crucial to the T-Buster's functioning, disassembling it piece by piece to build a diagram for it on his HUD.

He wiped his sweaty forehead with a rag, turning back to the work with jeweler's screwdriver in hand. "Of all the things I forgot to make a backup blueprint for, it had to be my most complicated piece of tech…" he mumbled to himself, annoyed with his own stupidity. Every single complicated piece had to be redrawn and re-specced by hand, taking at least an hour apiece. Although the T-Buster was a critical part of his gear that he wanted to get running again as soon as possible, he took his time to enjoy the process; the miniscule maze of parts fascinated him, even if he had been the one to build it initially. He dropped a few screws in a small container from the tip of his magnetic screwdriver, biting his tongue when he delicately opened the casing of the part.

He let out a sigh of relief. "Well, at least we can salvage the critical part," he thought to himself. Being the deepest-buried part of the gun, the micro-sized Power Ring Generator was relatively unscathed despite the horrendous state the rest of the cannon was in. Tails gently worked to remove the outer casing and mass of melted wires, setting the device on his workbench away from any highly-magnetic tools. Across the room, a dinging noise from his 3d printer alerted him that another part he had been waiting for was done. He hopped up from his bench and trotted over to pick up the large thermoplastic block, setting it in its place in a large cube formation. He plucked a portable welding tool and specially tinted glasses from his toolbox on his workbench, donning the glasses as he walked back over to the block. The small, handheld MIG welding tool quickly fed molten copper into the tiny gap between the blocks, binding to the metal powder dissolved into the thermoplastic to create a tight bond.

"Only about three more parts of the mold to build and I'll have another canopy for the Tornado!" he thought to himself with a smile, pushing the glasses up onto his forehead to observe the weld. He set the welding tool on top of the partially-completed mold and returned to the bench, not bothering to take off the glasses as he got back to work on the T-Buster. The 3d printer's odd noises filled the otherwise silent soundscape, keeping Tails focused on his task at hand.

Over the din of the printer, he heard the trapdoor open, but didn't turn to see who it was, being fully absorbed in the moment with the delicate parts he was sorting. "Tails! We need you up here as soon as you're available!" he heard Saito call. His voice seemed, causing Tails to drop his work and bolt for the ladder under impression that something was seriously wrong.

He poked his head above floor level, looking up to see Louise and Saito standing in the doorway of the workshop. "What is it?" he asked politely. "I'm sorta busy, so unless this is life-threateningly important, I don't want to stop halfway through my job, if you don't mind."

Louise’s face flushed red with anger. "Yeah, it's important! Check your left hand!"

Tails gave her a quizzical look as he stepped out of the ladder hole, shutting the trapdoor behind him. He took off his left glove and brushed aside the fur on the back of his hand, looking at the pale skin below. There seemed nothing unusual to him. "What, do you guys think I have fleas or something?"

Louise facepalmed, shaking her head. "No, you moron! Is your rune gone, too?"

Tails' eyes widened as he grabbed at his left hand once more, staring at the skin below his fur again. No traces of any markings remained.

Louise nodded. "As I thought. You both have lost your markings. Saito woke me up early when he found out about his. I assumed it would be the same, but I figured we should check anyhow."

Tails nodded. "Have you told Tabitha or Kirche yet?"

Louise shook her head. "You're their familiar, so I'm leaving that one to you. Anyways, the other reason I came to get you was because Agnès dropped by. Although the school's having a party today for the end of the war, we need to go to the castle. It's most likely a mission, so bring whatever gear you need with you."

Tails nodded. "Are we bringing Tabitha and Kirche?" he asked.

Saito shrugged. "I haven't seen either of them in a while, to be honest. I can help you find them, if you like," he offered.

"Tabitha should be in the library, if she's not with you," Louise stated, running her hand through her wavy pink hair. "Kirche's out for some reason back to Germania. She won't be back for a while."

Tails nodded and reached for the trapdoor. "Let me get a bit of gear and some food, and I'll be ready to go," Tails replied. He dropped down into his workshop and walked over to his workbench, giving his T-Buster a quick look. He was disappointed that it wouldn't be ready for the mission, but he decided he would make do with his bag of leftover home-made bombs and rocket shoes, which he had managed to fix the surprisingly minimal damage to. His wristcomm was also in working order after a bit of repair, thanks to its inherent simplicity compared to his T-Buster. He slipped the bag straps over his shoulder and stepped back upstairs, shutting the trapdoor behind him.

"Partner, what about me?" Tails heard Ring broadcast into his mind. He looked back over the workshop among Professor Colbert's old "organized clutter" that he hadn't dealt with yet.

"I dunno. That explosion really messed up your blade's temperament. It might shatter if I try to whack anything hard with it," Tails thought back, digging through the mess of chemical vials to unearth Ring from where he had set him the night before. The blade had taken on a slew of colors from the intense heat of his Chaos Blasts, the inscriptions still filled with soot and dirt. Tails tested the edge on a piece of paper and found that some sections had gone dull, as the heat had melted the edge out of shape.

"Yeah, but even if you don't use me, I could still be of help, right?" Ring stated. "Now that you don't have your rune, you need to be even more aware of enemies' positions. I can help with that."

It seemed to be sound logic to Tails. "Fine, but do me a favor," Tails stated.

"What?" Ring asked.

"If you think you have a good idea to talk about, and it's about women, just shut up. You really screwed me over talking about that elf girl like that. Tabitha hasn’t talked to me at all since I’ve been back."

Ring burst out laughing in Tails' mind, his speaking piece still welded to the blade. "Roger, captain!" he joked, chuckling a bit more. "By the way, any chance I could get another one of those Rings of yours?"

Tails thought about it, but rejected the idea after inspecting Ring's blade. "The holder is bent. I don't think I could get another one in there if I went at it with a sledgehammer." He sheathed Ring and strapped him to his waist, cinching the rig tight.

Stepping outside, he made his way over to the kitchen. The building was full of bustling chefs and servants, rushing ingredients and finished plates around the kitchen to loading carts to send off to the dining hall for the breakfast banquet. Tails weaved his way through the crowd to find Marteau, who was standing on a footstool to be visible while yelling orders. He was excited to see his favorite chef back at work, now that his hometown of Gotha was safe once more.

"Miles, our Warrior! Hey, everyone, Listen up!" Marteau called, grabbing Tails by the shoulder. "This young fox here died for us, and came back from the dead to keep on fighting! We owe this young man our life! Keep up the good work so we can pay him back!" Grabbing Tails by the hand, he hoisted the short young fox high like a ragdoll  with his sheer strength so everyone could get a good look. Applause erupted throughout the crowd from those who had hands to spare, with cheers from those who didn't.

Tails gave a short wave and an embarrassed smile. "Hey, I couldn't leave without coming back for seconds on Marteau's food, right?" Roaring laughter resounded through the room, leaving Marteau grinning in prideful embarrassment.

"You're too kind, Miles!" he said, setting the fox down. "Now, what can we do for you today?"

"I just wanted to let you know I would be taking a few apples and some cheese from the storage well for breakfast. I noticed the ingredients spreadsheet wasn’t on its usual hook."

"Bullshit, Miles! If you're going out on another adventure, you need a real breakfast. Siesta!" Marteau yelled, scanning the crowd.

"Yes?" Tails could hear her call over the hubbub of the busy servants.

"Bring me one of those omelets from the loading cart before it goes out. We need to get Miles a real breakfast," Marteau called back, waving her over. He pushed Tails over to a half-full table where some lower chefs were dicing and mincing various produces for more omelets and soups. Siesta brought over the plate and set it in front of him, turning to return to her station. She hadn’t gotten far before Marteau stopped her and indicated to a second empty chair at the end of the table.

"That's no way to treat our guest! Keep him entertained until he needs to leave. You're dismissed from your duties until then," he said with a smile, patting her on the back. Marteau returned to his footstool and began barking orders as Siesta took a seat. Tails immediately began carving up the omelet, letting out the steam to cool down the melty cheese and various ingredients on the inside.

"So, where will you be going today?" Siesta asked politely, her hands in her lap. Tails could see she was slightly embarrassed, so he decided to be honest.

"We're going to the castle. Tabitha, Louise, Saito and I. You're welcome to come, if you like. We can deal with Louise later."

As if Tails had read her mind, she lit up with a smile. "Yes, please! I can't stand letting Miss Vallière steal Saito like that! She had him killed, doing what she did!" Siesta argued. She immediately blushed, looking down at her hands in her lap in embarrassment. "Please don't tell Miss Vallière I said that. She could have me in jail, I’m sure, with her relations to the Queen like she has."

Tails shook his head. "Yeah, I wouldn't tell either way. It's our secret."

Siesta nodded with a smile. "Thank you!" she stated, watching him closely as he began to eat. Tails dug into his omelet, savoring every bite as Siesta watched patiently, occasionally asking him a few trivial questions. When he was finished, he pushed his chair out and stood up, gathering his plates to take them to the sink. Siesta stopped him, gently taking the dishes from him.

"I'll get it. You've been a big help to me, so it's the least I could do," she offered, walking over to the washbin. She pushed up her sleeves and quickly cleaned the dishes, setting them in a drying rack. When she wiped off her hands on a dirty towel, she turned and nodded to Tails, ready to go.

Tails lead the way out of the kitchen to a waiting carriage, where Louise, Tabitha, and Saito were already waiting. Headmaster Osmond was out on the green alongside a group of first-year students, instructing classes in place of Professor Colbert, but no one paid the small group any mind.

Louise, upon seeing Siesta, grew furious. "Why is she coming, Tails?! This is a mission from the Queen, not some picnic we can invite our friends to!" she yelled.

Tails shrugged. "Chill out, Louise. She wanted to come, so she can come. She may be one more person we have to defend, but that's okay, we'll get the job done. Do you even know what the mission is?"

Saito shook his head. "Agnès just told me to bring us all to the castle while Louise was in class. She didn't say anything more, so it must be pretty important."

"Whatever," Louise stated, throwing her hands into the air. "Let's just get a move on so we don't keep the queen waiting."

The five boarded the carriage, with Louise stopping outside to give the driver instructions. When the door was shut, the carriage lurched forward, slowly making its way along the dirt road.

"So we have absolutely no clue what doing, right?" Tails asked in confirmation.

"Yep, pretty much," Saito agreed. He was nervously eyeing Louise and Siesta, sitting between them. A bump in the road gave Siesta the perfect excuse to cling to Saito, sending Louise into a silent, seething rage that Tails knew wouldn’t subside for the entirety of the ride.

* * *

 

Suddenly, the cart stopped. They had hardly been riding for twenty minutes, it seemed, which piqued Tails’ curiousity. He opened the door to get a view outside, but yelped as he ducked back in to dodge a massive axe that whistled past, shearing the door off its hinges. He leaped out of the carriage to get a good view of his assailants, instinctively drawing Ring. A ring of black-bodied creatures surrounded the carriages with a variety of nasty-looking weapons, ranging from spiked clubs to proper bladed weapons of all kinds.

"Partner, what about not using me?" Ring broadcasted.

"Do you really think we have time for that?" Tails replied, waiting to intercept a move from any of the beasts. "Coat your blade in a shield so that the blade isn't taking the impacts. I'll just beat them to death with a blunt stick, if need be."

"I can't, smartass. I only control your shield – I don't have one of my own. Since your rune is gone, I can't do that anymore."

"Well, then we'll deal with a broken blade later when we cross that bridge!" Tails replied. He reached into his bag and pulled out a fragmentation bomb, pressing a button on the black, spherical device before lobbing it at the nearest opponent. The explosive caught several black creatures in the percussive, fiery blast, disintegrating them into small bits of blood and bone. The carriage horses startled and began to move, but the ring of dark monsters quickly closed in to hold them still. Saito emerged from the carriage with Derflinger at the ready, turning to engage the nearest opponent. Tabitha stood at the door, launching icicles at anything that moved from her wooden staff.

As Tails hacked, slashed, and bombed his way around the ring of opponents, he caught sight of what looked like a woman flying far above the carriage… on a black manta ray? "What the heck?" he thought. Winding up for a throw, he lobbed a bomb at the flying woman as hard as he could, but she dodged the projectile with ease, allowing the projectile to detonate in the distance. With a grim smile, she turned and rode her flying beast into the distance, leaving the two to fight off the remaining monsters.

Saito hacked through the last monster, breathing heavily as he tried to catch his breath. "What… the hell were those?" he asked.

"I dunno…" Tails replied. "They all had some sort of purple mark on them. There was some lady riding a flying manta ray with a similar purple thing on it, and she was dressed in purple and black. I bet it had to do with her."

Saito shot Tails a face of confusion, as if he were questioning the existence of a flying manta ray. All he could think to do was reply with a shrug, as if to say “like hell I know?”

"Well, it looks like we have some work to do," Saito said, pointing at the carriage. Tails turned to see the driver of the carriage slumped back in his seat. His torso was peppered with stab wounds, his blood dyeing his clothes red with blood. "Do you know how to drive a carriage?"

Tails gave him a sidelong glance. "Since when did I look like a coach driver to you?" he asked rhetorically. "Whatever, I'll figure it out. Or maybe one of the girls knows how. Siesta, perhaps?"

Saito nodded and walked over to the carriage door. Meanwhile, Tails hopped up onto the driver's platform and gently lifted the body off of the bench, struggling to carry him to the edge of the road. He set the body down by a tree, shutting the portly old man's eyelids and pressing his hat down over his face.

"Sorry it ended this way, mister," Tails whispered, feeling his voice choke up with emotion. He hastily turned back to the carriage to see Siesta taking the reins, with Saito stepping into the carriage. He walked around to the open doorway and pointed toward the front of the carriage. "I think I'm going to sit up front with Siesta, in case someone else attacks. Knock on the wall if you need me," he said. Leaving Saito and Louise to their thoughts, he took a seat up on the driver's bench alongside Siesta, staring back at the old man's body as the cart lurched forward, leaving the body behind to the elements.


	60. Season 3 Chapter 2

The group reached the castle by the late afternoon. Not wanting to keep queen Henrietta waiting, they took off for the throne room as soon as they turned over the carriage to the castle guard and explained what had happened.

"Ah, Louise!" Henrietta exclaimed as the group silently entered the large hall. "It's wonderful to see you again, all of you. Thank you for coming."

Louise bowed deeply in response, with Tabitha and the others following suit. "It's our pleasure to serve you, your Majesty. How may we help you?"

"Well," Queen Henrietta began, pacing the floor in front of the group. "After that fateful night you all know so well, I felt quite ashamed of what I had done. Everyone sees you two as heroes for what you did that night," she said, gesturing to Tails and Saito. "But, I felt that it was absolutely unjust and wrong of me to send you two without aid. Through several short campaigns after that night, Albion ordered a full retreat, and has confined itself to its borders since. That in itself deserves commendation, so I have persuaded my advisors to ignore your status as a Familiar and allow me to present you with these." Queen Henrietta walked back to her throne and fetched two rolled-up scrolls, bound with a blue satin sash and a gold seal. Louise let out a short gasp upon recognizing the seal.

"These documents would allow me to officially declare you two as a Chevalier, a personal knight of the realm. I would hope you would accept my token of gratitude for your faithful service," Henrietta concluded, extending the parchments to the two boys.

Tails looked over to the rest of the gang, waiting for permission from Louise. "There's probably some stupid social code I'm not getting, here…" he thought. Saito stared at the parchment for a moment, and then shook his head.

"Unfortunately, something has come up," Saito stated, showing Queen Henrietta the back of his left hand. "We don't know why, but this morning, my Familiar's runes disappeared. That means, without my powers, I'm no better off than any normal boy. Until we manage to restore my powers, I don't feel it would be fit for me to join your knights. They might see it as an insult," he conceded with a small shrug. "Same situation with Tails."

The Queen retracted the papers, holding them close to her chest as she blushed in embarrassment. "I see… Well, I shall hold on to these papers should you reconsider. However, I'm sorry to say I have another favor to ask of you four."

"Don't be sorry in the slightest, your Majesty!" Louise blurted. "We would be glad to help you where we can! What would you like of us?"

"Well… as you know, Miles and Saito stand before us due to some powerful magic with the capability to resurrect a lost life with no side-effects, unlike the Ring of Andvari. This sort of power could be greatly beneficial to our cause, if we could prevent the loss of important friends. I'm sure you would agree."

Louise blushed, agreeing without verbal response. "In that case," Henrietta continued, setting the papers back on her throne. "I would ask if you could find this powerful mage and ask them to help us. Saito, you and Tails are the only two who have come in contact with this mage. Do you remember anything about them that might help us identify and locate this person?"

Tails scratched his head, attempting to recall thoughts of the person. "Definitely a girl, very shapely body as Saito would agree. Green dress and a white hat, long blond hair?" he asked rhetorically, looking to Saito for confirmation. Saito nodded silently. "She had a name…" Saito added hesitantly. "Started with a T, long like Tabitha's… ended with A like Tabitha's… Tiffania! That's it. She lives in some woods somewhere near where we fought."

Derf slid out of his sheath with a slick metal-on-leather scraping noise. "She lives in the woods to the South of Gotha. I teleported Saito's body there when he died, where we found the girl. I sent Ring off to the academy to tell the girls after that, so he probably remembers the location too."

"Alright!" Saito stated resolutely. "We'll get headed out there as soon as possible. It shouldn't take too long, right? Perhaps the rest of the day, and we either find her by nightfall or spend the night in Gotha."

"Thank you, all of you. I wish you the best of luck on your journey. You'll find a carriage waiting outside to take you there." With that, the group stepped outside, leaving the Queen to her thoughts.

* * *

 

"Do you really think we'll be able to find her?" Louise asked as the group made their way through the halls. "I mean, we only have a single location where she MIGHT be. What do we do if she's not there?"

"Would you quit freaking out, Louise?" Saito asked nonchalantly. "We'll figure it out when we get there. I'm sure she lives nearby. She wasn't out there for no reason, I'm sure of it."

Tails and Tabitha silently watched the drama unfold in front of them with partial interest. Louise punched Saito in the arm, forcing him to step back in fear of further blows. "Would you take this more seriously, for once?" Louise stated rhetorically. "Besides the fact that this is an important mission from the Queen, it might be our one clue to helping you get your runes back!"

Saito's shoulders dropped. "I'm not really sure I want them back…" he muttered to himself.

"What was that?" Louise asked, getting angry.

"Nothing. Just drop it."

"No. Tell me!"

"No. Drop it."

Tails could see that Louise was furious by now. "Derf, tell me what he said!" she yelled, reaching for Derf's handle. Saito beat her to it, clamping Derf into his sheath tightly despite Louise's protests. "Louise, you're freaking out over nothing. Relax, we've got a mission to focus on."

The group finally made it to the front gates of the castle amidst Saito and Louise’s arguing, where a white carriage was waiting patiently for them. Louise flung the door open and stepped inside. "Saito, go sit up front with the driver and tell him where we're going. Make sure he doesn't die, this time."

Saito nodded silently, watching Louise intently until she disappeared behind the carriage wall. Tabitha and Siesta stepped silently into the carriage, leaving Tails behind with Saito outside.

"Hey, Tails. Come join me up front. It's boring being alone on guard duty," Saito stated, pointing to the front of the carriage. Tails nodded and climbed up to the top of the carriage, sitting on the flat white top of the carriage. He listened carefully as Saito stepped up to the driver's bench and began reciting instructions to the driver. With a loud crack of the reins, the two horses up front began trotting off in some direction Tails didn't care to track.

* * *

 

Tails laid back on the warm rooftop, using his tails as supports for his legs and head. The ride proceeded in relative silence for about ten minutes, until the carriage had left town, the city scenery giving way to open fields and sparse tree groves.

Tails could hear Saito climb up onto the roof alongside him, taking a seat nearby. "Hey Tails… you asleep?"

Tails cracked an eye, watching him closely. "Yeah, I was just resting. What's up?"

"Mind if I ask a few questions? They may be a bit personal, so you're welcome to not answer or call me out if I get somewhere uncomfortable…"

"Sure, fire away," Tails replied, shutting his eyes again. "I'll try not to fall asleep, but I've been pulling all-nighters doing repairs the last few nights, so if I do, just give me a good shake."

Saito nodded. "Do you feel anything when you kill? I know you've had a lot more experience at it than I do. Our plane combat during that airship attack was my first kill, and I've just been feeling… bitter. I think Professor Colbert's letter really brought it out, gave me a way to define it. He was totally against killing, and wanted us to avoid it, right? But how do we do that when our powers are focused around killing?"

"Well, I suppose it's all based on who you are," Tails began. "For me, I've been fortunate to avoid killing up until that time I took Cosmo's life. I still don't forgive myself for it, nor anyone involved. Dark Oak and the Metarex especially, since they more or less caused it all. Before that, we fought robots called SWAT bots and what we called "badniks". More often than not, our enemy, Ivo Robotnik, used animals as living power sources for these "Badniks", so it was more freeing than killing. The shock of killing Cosmo left me bitter for ages afterwards, and I didn't want to see any of my friends. After that, I suppose I was numbed to it. Or maybe I saw the danger my friends like you guys were in, and that gave me the will to take a life. I don't think I could take a life without a friend's life at stake. At least I hope I wouldn't."

Saito nodded, shifting around on the rooftop to lay down as well. "I guess that makes sense. But you make it look so easy…"

"Well, I could say the same for you, when you get going. If you're talking about that weird thing I do where I turn black and go crazy like at the lake with Wales and the Queen, that's just something that some Mobians do. It's an instinctual thing left over from our animal ancestors, but it's amplified for those who can use Chaos powers. I've seen my friend Sonic do it once, and it was terrifying. I honestly don't remember much every time it happens, but I remember about when it happens and why."

"Have you ever killed anyone because of it?"

"Not that I can think of. I'm pretty sure it only happened once before I came here, and it was a long time in the past. My friends calmed me down before I did any major damage."

"I see… Do you worry about your friends at home? They seem pretty close."

"Oh, definitely. Heck, each night I wonder if I’ll come home to find that Sonic started a food fire in my kitchen and burned my house down!” Tails chuckled. “We're all a bit dysfunctional in our own ways, but we complement each other pretty well. Sonic, Shadow, and Knuckles all have super short tempers, but people like Amy and Cream keep them calm. Amy tends to get herself into trouble a lot, but we all chip in and get her out whenever she gets kidnapped, lost, or whatever the issue is. I often run out of supplies and get lost in my research, so they keep me social and do supply runs for my workshop. I wonder what they would do without each other once every now and then. Do you have some friends you worry about?"

Saito shook his head lightly, but stopped himself. "It's not so much friends at home as friends I might lose from here. I don't have many friends, if you could even call them that. I was pretty average at almost everything, so no one really stuck around. Here, though, we're something else. Although I want to return home so everything goes back to normal, I don't want to lose my friends here."

"Well, not much I can say about that. Solar eclipses aren't very common, even with two moons, so it's not like you could pop back and forth between worlds at will. If we could find some other method like those magic doors to the underground library, that might work. Problem is, I have a bad feeling almost all knowledge about those things were locked up in the library we trashed, so good luck finding it."

"Yeah…" Saito sighed.

* * *

 

"… So someday I would like to return with Saito to see my grandfather's homeworld," Siesta concluded.

"Yeah, well, remember that he's MY familiar. If there's any complications bringing back more than one person, I go first. Got it?" Louise stated, angry but calming down.

Siesta shrugged nonchalantly. "If he prefers me, then he should be able to choose me. Don't use your authority as a noble to intervene in love. What about you, miss Tabitha? Is there someone you love?"

Tabitha stared blankly at the two girls, pondering whether she should even dignify that question with a response. She opted to stay silent, burying herself in a book that she found in the carriage among a selection kept stashed under the cushioned seat.

"She's blushing a little! Come on, Miss Tabitha, you can tell us! It's not like we will tell anyone," Siesta goaded with a smile. Tabitha tuned out Siesta's incessant voice as she focused on the reading selection, a text on the biology and ecology of bugbears that mildly interested her. Page after page of information flew by as she scanned the book, hunting for any interesting information that would captivate her. Finally, Siesta's voice broke through her mental barrier:

"Is it mister Miles, miss Tabitha?"

Tabitha looked up and stared Siesta in the eye, watching her every move as Siesta tried to excite her with provocative statements. "I knew it! It's Miles, isn't it! You could have told us and it would have been no different. It'll be our secret. What about him interests you?"

Tabitha shut the book in one hand with her middle finger holding her position in the reading as she reached for her staff with her other hand. Without warning, she gently smacked the maid girl over the head with the curled end of the staff, forcing her to back up and hold the sore spot on her head with her hand. "Ow! That hurt! I'm sorry for being so rude, it's just… I'm curious, you know?" Siesta spouted, continuing on her endless discussion about Tails to some foreign, absent person. Probably a Tabitha that cared.

"But what about him do I like?" Tabitha thought to herself, staring at the pages of her re-opened book. "It's not like I had to kiss him when he returned – I didn’t feel anything when I did, so it’s not like I benefitted in any way. I probably over-reacted to the information about the well-endowed 'fairy' we are going to visit, too. Perhaps something will arise that would help me describe it, someday…"

* * *

 

"… So yeah, that's the basics of Chaos energy. It seems complicated when you get into the details, but if you just take the complex stuff for granted and simply accept it, it's quite simple," Tails concluded, finishing off some diagram in the air with his hand.

"Interesting. It sounds really cool," Saito stated, genuinely impressed. "Wait, how did we even get to talking about this again?"

"Eh, who cares? I think it started with some discussion about some P.E. teacher you hate, followed by physical exercise, followed by our runes augmenting physical abilities, to Chaos powers, to my ability to fly, and back to Chaos powers again. The details are blurry beyond that," Tails stated.

Saito nodded and let out a yawn. "I think I'm going to try to catch a nap, 'cuz I'm tired as heck. Don't know why, though. Maybe it's just that I have less physical energy without my Familiar runes."

"Yeah, who knows," Tails agreed, yawning on his own now. "I think I'll join you on that nap; this roof is pretty warm in the sun. Here, take this." Tails removed his left tail from below his legs and offered it to Saito to put under his head, using it as a pillow. "By the way, if you fall off, don't take me with you. I'd prefer to stay as clean as possible until I can get back and take a bath."

"Yeah, yeah, I get it. Have Ring wake us up when we get there or if we're being attacked," Saito stated, shutting his eyes and drifting into sleep.

"I assume you heard that, Ring?" Tails asked. "Either way, I'm headed to sleep. Wake me if you need to wake Saito."

"'Aight, partner. Sleep well."


	61. Season 3 Chapter 3

"Tails, wake up. We're close," Saito said, shaking the fox gently to wake him up. Tails slowly pried himself off of the wooden roof, twisting to pop his back and become flexible once more. "Where are we?" he asked.

"In those woods we talked about, remember? It's getting close to night, so we need to keep our eyes peeled," Saito stated, turning to face the edge of the road into the semi-light forest. "If we miss her, we have to head back into town and come back tomorrow, which is a pain."

"Yeah, yeah, got it," Tails said, yawning and stretching some more. "Ring, can you tell if anyone is nearby? We could just go hunting for people in the woods and check them out until we get the right person."

"Let me see…" Ring broadcasted to Saito and Tails. "… Sorry, I can't really tell much beyond a hundred meters without any of those Power Rings. Got any on hand?"

Tails shook his head. "I have two in my shoes, but that would really throw me off if we got into combat with one shoe disabled, so I don't want to mess with it. We aren't quite there yet, so just keep checking on the way there. She'll turn up eventually."

"Roger. Speak of the devil, there's something on the very edge of my range to the carriage's left."

Saito got to his feet and hopped off of the carriage, landing softly in the grass to the side of the road. "Driver, stop here for a moment, please! There's someone we need to go see."

The driver nodded and tugged on the reins, pulling the horses to a stop. Tails hopped off to join Saito, followed by the three girls stepping out of the carriage.

"Are we there yet?" Louise asked impatiently as they walked off into the woods. Saito replied with a casual shrug. "We don't know, but Ring senses someone out there, so we're gonna go check. You can come if you like, or wait in the carriage."

"Coming!" Siesta called, lifting her maid’s dress slightly so she could run to catch up. Tabitha and Louise followed behind the two boys, Louise's eyes nervously scanning her surroundings. The deeper they went, the darker the woods became as the overhead foliage became denser and denser..

"Still sense the person, Ring?" Tails thought.

"Yeah, still roughly ahead and to our right about seventy meters."

Suddenly, a scream broke the silence. Tails whipped around to face the attacker, his hand tight around Ring’s grip. Louise was frozen in shock, her gaze fixated on a large spider dangling on a gossamer-thin thread in front of her face. Tabitha observed the spider with apathy, as if she were mentally cataloging the spider’s colorful carapace for further research.

"Kill it!" Louise cried, drawing her wand. Tabitha was quick to stop her, though. Waving her staff, she caught the web the spider hung on and broke it off, using her staff to carry the spider away. She set it gently on the ground by the base of the tree it fell from, allowing it to scurry away after detaching from its web.

"Why'd you let it live?!" Louise asked, flabbergasted at Tabitha's actions. "It could be poisonous and hurt someone!"

"It's rare," Tabitha stated, plucking the remains of the spider's silk off of her staff. A cold stare from the blue-haired girl forced Louise to withhold her complaints, leaving her with a scowl across her face.

"Partner, the person's moving!" Ring urgently broadcasted to Tails' mind. "They're getting out of range really fast, so get a move on!"

Tails took off into the woods, leaving the group behind as they called out to him. Using his tails as a propeller, he glided over the forest floor as fast as he dared, darting and pushing off of the trees like a yellow pinball. "How close are we now?" he thought

"About sixty meters and closing fast," Ring stated. "… Now fifty… now forty… thirty, you should be able to see them by now."

Tails slowed to a running pace to be able to see better, scanning the woods around him. "Can you tell what they're thinking?" Tails asked aloud, dashing between the trees and bushes.

"No clue. Their mind is totally empty, as if they're -- Shit, move!"

Tails felt a figure land on his back, knocking him to the ground. Pushing off the ground with his tails, he rolled sideways as the two fell, attempting to pin the assailant between himself and the ground. He felt an object drop over his throat as he reached to grab it and pull it away, the events nothing but a blur of color in the struggle for survival. The sharp pressure of a wire cut into his hand as he pushed hard against the bowstring, giving him some breathing room as his opponent tried to choke him with the curved wooden weapon. With a strong, final push against the string with both hands, the bow gave way, the wooden frame snapping in half somewhere just behind his neck. Tails pushed hard off the ground with his tails, launching himself away from the assailant like a cannonball.

He turned to catch a view of his opponent as he landed. A young blond-haired man, his face obscured by a dirty grey makeshift bandanna stood before him in a full outfit of dark brown, green, and tan lozenge camoflage. With uncanny speed, the assassin drew several knives and tossed them at Tails with a flick of his wrist, forcing the fox to duck and dodge, taking to the air with his tails to throw his opponent's calculated aim off by mere inches. The young man, out of knives to throw, turned to run after his failed attempt, but Tails chased him down, planting a flying kick square into the young man's back. The blow sent the assassin tumbling to the ground, comging to a painful stop against a tree. Tails walked over slowly as he recovered his breath, dragging the assassin to his feet by the collar of his shirt.

"Who are you, and what do you have against us?" Tails asked, eyeing the assassin closely. He ripped off the bandana to reveal the face of a pointy-eared boy much younger than he’d anticipated, certainly no older than Saito by any stretch of the imagination. "You gonna talk, or are we going to be doing things my way?" Tails asked again.

The boy spit in his eye, causing Tails to flinch momentarily. He felt the boy try to struggle free of his grip, so he took off into the air with his tails, dragging the boy with him high above the treetops. "If you're going to be difficult, I can let gravity do the talking. I don't think people will be able to tell it's you after falling at terminal velocity," Tails said, wiping his eye with his other hand. He could see the boy was frightened out of his wits, so he let him back down and pressed him against the tree once more. "So, you gonna talk, or what? Can you at least tell me your name?"

The boy shuddered, wincing at some unknown pain. "Naedrithal," he whispered.

Tails smiled, trying to set the boy at ease. "See? That wasn't so hard. If we can do this peacefully, I'll let you go and you can go home and practice your knife throwing some more. Wouldn't you prefer that? So can you tell me why you tried to kill me?"

The boy sat still for a while, conflicted as his eyes roamed the woods behind Tails. "You killed my eldest brother. I promised my middle brother revenge for your act of cruelty… is it true, how he died? That you used magic to choke him with his own bowstring?"

Tails sighed, letting his head drop a bit. "Yeah, I suppose you could call it a kind of magic. He had just killed my best friend, and I was in a rage. I saw he was using the same arrows that killed my friend, so I killed him first. I'm terribly sorry about that, but I hope we can still get along."

The boy gave Tails a wan smile. "Perhaps… someday, somewhere we c-"

Naedrithal was brutally interrupted as a foreign object punctured his head along his ear line from the left, boring cleanly into his skull. It had only registered to Tails seconds later what had just occurred, as his smile morphed into a face of terror. A massive icicle stuck out of the boy's head, weighing it down to one side as the boy's face held its demonic smile. He let go of Naedrithal's shirt and let him slump down against the tree as he turned to face the group. Tabitha stood emotionless with her wand outstretched, with Saito, Louise and Siesta standing in the background, all equally as shocked as Tails.

Tails fell to his knees, watching the boy's corpse disappear behind a wall of tears. He felt a rage build within him that he struggled to control, wiping his eyes with his fur-coated arm. He gently shut the boy's eyes and removed the icicle, using the purple bandana to cover the gaping hole in the side of his skull as he laid him to rest. When he was done, he stood and turned his head to face Tabitha, who had approached to "admire" her work, observing the corpse closely.

"What the hell, Tabitha?! He was friendly, a nice guy! We could have been friends with him! He wasn't going to harm me!" Tails cried, watching her intensely, with a sense of rage, as she knelt down to observe something. She plucked a dagger from the ground near where Naedrithal's hand was resting and showed it to Tails. The blade was oozing in a dark black grease, with a secret compartment in the handle of the knife made visible by the press of a button.

"Elvish venom. Instant death," Tabitha stated, indicating to the goo on the blade.

Tails stood in sniffling silence as he struggled to regain composure from his sudden outburst. "Still, he could have been our friend. He didn't need to die like that! Couldn't you have done it any other way?!"

Tabitha rose to her feet, dropping the poisoned blade over the dead boy's body. She turned to head back to Louise and the others, who were still trying to piece things together for themselves.

"Ring, can you tell me if there's anyone else nearby?" Tails thought, wiping his eyes for a final time.

"Yeah, there is. About ninety meters to your right. Definitely thinking something this time. Something about finding some fruit. Everything's coming in fragments, though. Almost out of range."

Tails motioned for Saito and the others to come over, pointing off in the direction Ring had indicated. He prepared to take off into the woods once again, to get away from the sickening image of the dead pointy-eared boy, but Saito stopped him.

"Don't take off so fast," he stated, watching Tails closely. "There could be more like him. You were lucky Tabitha saved you on that one, no matter how gruesome it was. Where is this other person we are checking on?"

Tails pointed in the direction Ring had directed him. "Ring thinks they aren’t dangerous.” Saito nodded and drew Derflinger, ready to swing at a moment's notice. Tails could see his hands were shaking a little, clearly much less steady than with his Gandalfr powers. "He's probably just nervous, I suppose," Tails thought. "I would be the same way, if I'm not already."

Tails took the rearguard as the group followed Saito forward through the woods. There was a small clearing hidden through the trees ahead of them, masked in purple shade as the sun set over the treetops. The group stepped out into the clearing, looking around for any signs of footprints or passing humans.

Tails heard a branch crackle behind him, drawing his attention. A shapely, blond-haired girl wearing a floppy wide-brim white hat stood behind a bush and tree, staring intently at him with deep blue eyes. The one-of-a-kind outfit she wore – a green open-back, short-skirted dress held up by a leather loop around her neck and whose skirt split up the sides to her lower waist, white tied-on stockings and matching sleeves for her lower arms – struck a familiar chord in his mind.

"Tails, is that you? And Saito?!" the girl asked, her voice slowly rising in excitement. She came out from behind the tree and jogged out to greet them, wrapping Saito in a warm embrace. Saito’s face was red with mixed ecstasy and nervousness, glancing over at his pink-haired master. Louise stared angrily as Siesta twiddled her thumbs, looking downcast.

"Saito, is this the girl that rescued you, the one that you… spent so much time with?" Louise asked impatiently, her fists on her hips and her foot tapping steadily. The green-clad girl released Saito and turned to face the rest of the group, giving them a slight bow. "Are you Saito's friends? If so, you are welcome to stay the night with me if you have no place to go" she offered. She turned to face Tails, embracing him in a deep hug too. "It's so great to see both of you again! I'm glad you are doing well," the girl stated, releasing Tails after an awkward hug that seemed to last an eternity.

"It's great to see you too, Tiffania," Tails said, prying herself from him. "We'd love to spend the night at your place, if you don't mind," he stated, staring at Louise and giving her a reasonably well executed stinkeye to stop her from objecting. "I'm sure it would be much nicer than the hotels in town, or spending the night on the carriage ride home."

"Well then, right this way!" Tiffania said, gesturing off into the woods. She began walking, but stopped, turning back to the tree where she was hiding. She walked over and retrieved a small basket hidden behind the tree, opening the lid to check its contents.

"I had come to gather tea ingredients and extra berries for some preserves, and almost ran off without them!" she said, gesturing to the basket. "Anyways, we'll get going now."

* * *

 

Night was beginning to set in. Tiffania led the way through the woods until a small house came into view, with warm firelight shining out of every window. She opened the door gently and allowed her guests to enter, shutting the door behind her. "I'll get some water started for tea in a moment. I'm assuming you will be having mint again, Tails? And Saito?"

"Yes please!" Tails and Saito said in unison, turning to face each other as if to see who would call “jinx!” first. Tiffania reached for a kettle sitting on a shelf over a kitchen counter, turning to head to the door. Saito reached out and stopped Tiffania by grabbing hold of the kettle. "I'll get it," he offered, taking the kettle from her. He stepped outside to find the well or lake, leaving Tails and the girls standing inside.

"Please, make yourselves at home," Tiffania said, gesturing to the chairs and tables around the room. "I know it's not much, but I don't often have guests. I'm glad you could stay the night."

Louise took a chair by the fireplace on the far end of the cabin, looking back at Tiffania with controlled aggression. "So, how did you come to know Saito and Miles?"

"Miles?" Tiffania asked, looking confused. "Oh, you must mean Tails."

"That's his real name," Louise stated. "He goes by Tails for the most part, though."

Tiffania looked over at Tails with a slightly hurt expression, as if she were betrayed. Tails rubbed the back of his head in embarrassment, looking down at the ground. "Sorry," he apologized, looking up at her face. "I wasn't trying to lie or confuse you, it's just that I prefer Tails. Some people insist on calling me Miles, though," he added, glancing over at Louise.

Tiffania smiled once more. "It's ok, I understand. If you prefer, I will continue to call you Tails," she suggested, earning a nod from the yellow fox. "Miss Louise, to answer your question, I found the two out in that meadow where you found me today. I was picking herbs for seasoning my dinner when I found Saito, leaning against a tree. Suddenly, Tails appeared next to him in a flash of white light, both of them scarred and beaten. I think they were dead, but I wasn’t sure, so I used a magic heirloom to bring them back."

Louise stood out of her chair, staring at Tiffania intensely. "What kind of heirloom? Bringing back the dead is serious; nothing today can do that the same as what you did."

Tiffania looked down at her hand, fiddling with a small silver ring on her finger. "There used to be a black, round stone embedded in this ring. It was a gift from my mother, handed down through my family, and was said it could bring three fallen souls back to this world. My mother spent its first use, on me. I had died in childbirth, so she brought me back. One night, she disappeared, leaving behind a few of her possessions for me, including this ring. The other two uses I spent on Tails and Saito, since I felt they were special, after appearing in the woods out of nowhere like that."

Louise slumped back in her chair, rubbing her face. "Damn," she muttered under her breath. "Another mission we'll have to call a failure. The Queen isn't going to like this."

Saito reentered the room, holding the water-laden kettle in two hands to support its weight. He crossed the room slowly to avoid spilling and gently hooked the kettle to a metal rod that hung horizontally across the stone fireplace. Tails took a seat at the kitchen table as minutes of silence passed. Slowly, the water came to a rolling boil, the steam whistling through small drilled holes in the metal lid.

Louise shot out of her seat, some thought finally formulated in her head. "Tiffania, do you know anything about familiars?"

Tiffania stopped where she was standing, wracking her mind for something. "I've heard the term a few times before, when I was young. I think Saito mentioned it once or twice while he was here before."

Louise pressed on, becoming excited. "Do you know anything about how Familiars get their runes or how they might be lost? Is there anything your mother might have taught you alongside giving you these relics?"

Tiffania shook her head as she extracted several mugs from a cabinet. "No, she never taught me about things like that. That would have been my father's job according to my mother, although I hardly remember him at all. He was never around much."

Louise was about to fall back to her chair, but instead bolted for the door, upset by some turn of events that had unfolded in her mind. Siesta took off after her, followed by Saito, but Derflinger stopped him with a quick call.

"It's probably about you, Saito," Derf suggested. "Think. Asking about familiar runes? She expected Tiffania to have some sort of answer as to how to get your runes back. Seeing you is probably the last thing she needs, since it would remind her that you want to leave and aren't hers anymore. Give her some space, I'm sure Siesta can help her solve it."

Saito reluctantly took a seat, gently taking a mug of tea that Tiffania offered him. "I sure hope so. But if she doesn't come back soon, I'm going out for her anyways. We've already had trouble twice today, so I wouldn't put it past fate to throw another one our way."

"Hey, she's a competent magician, right? I'm sure she can handle a few bad guys if need be," Tails reassured Saito, sipping slowly on his hot tea.

"I hope so," Saito replied warily.


	62. Season 3 Chapter 4

Louise dashed through the trees under the bright moonlight of the two full moons, trying to get as far away from that cottage as she dared. She slowed to a stop on the forest floor, standing before a tree.

"Stupid Saito!" she yelled, punching the tree as hard as she could bear. "Stupid bitch! Damn Saito and that cow!" Louise's fists were bloody and painful by the time her rage subsided, leaving her whimpering as she made her way over to a stump to sit down on. She stared at her bloodied hands, then down at the ground as tears filled her eyes.

"My one chance at keeping him here, gone! She doesn't know a damn thing…" Louise mumbled to herself, letting out the tears of her pain.

"Miss Vallière?" a voice called out to Louise from the woods in question. "Are you alright?"

Siesta stepped out of the forest gloom, watching Louise with her sympathetic face, her hands clasped together at her waist as if she were waiting for orders as a maid. "I'm sorry to hear about Saito, but you mustn't hurt yourself like that."

Louise stared at her for a moment, then broke eye contact. "Stay away, you cow! You want Saito just as bad as she does, so you're no better!" she stated, nursing her hand. Siesta took notice and withdrew a handkerchief from a pocket sewn into her dress.

"Let me take care of that for you," Siesta offered, holding out her hand. After a moment of stubborn resistance, Louise held out her hand, allowing Siesta to bind the cloth around it to stop the bleeding. "You're right. Against Miss Tiffania, we don't stand much of a chance, but we have to try, right? We'll beat her, just you see!"

Louise sat impatiently, humiliated that she was so distraught in front of her opponent. When Siesta was done with the bandaging, Louise jerked her hand back, observing Siesta's work. "Thanks, I suppose. Don't tell Saito about this, alright? Or I'll have your head."

Siesta stepped back and looked on quietly. "I understand. This'll be our secret."

"And you won't be needing to keep it a secret for long, will you, Void mage?" a voice echoed through the woods. The two girls looked around in fright for the mysterious intruder, finally catching sight of a floating figure outlined by the moonlight above. A lady stood upon the floating creature, with a glowing purple mark on her forehead similar to that of her mount.

"Who are you? Why are you bothering us?" Louise called, reaching for her wand.

"I wouldn't do that, Void mage," the lady called. Suddenly, the forest around the girls lit up with purple eyes as dark, wolf-like creatures crept out of the forest, seemingly from nowhere. Louise leveled her wand at the nearest creature, causing it to erupt into a ball of fire with a single word. The pack began to close the circle as more wolves packed themselves in behind their comrades, forming a ring of dark fur around the girls.

Louise let loose with a barrage of explosions as the first wolves made their moves, lunging inward on the two. One managed to evade Louise's spells, slamming her to the ground with enough force to launch her wand from her hand into the grass beyond. Siesta, right on point, grabbed a large branch and brought it crashing down over the wolf's head with what adrenaline-fueled strength she had, snapping the rotted wood over the wolf's head. She followed up with a swift kick to the head, knocking the wolf out cold. As Louise got to her feet, Siesta darted over to the grass where Louise's wand had fallen, searching frantically.

"Found it! Miss Vallière, catch!" Siesta called, tossing what she thought to be the wand to Louise. A wolf from the ring darted in and slammed her from behind, knocking her to the ground. Louise aimed the wand at the wolf as it leaped away from Siesta's fallen body, still motionless on the ground. The wolf wasn't able to land from the leap before it exploded into a ball of bloody fur and bone, fragments of carcass strewn across the field. Another wolf had taken it's fallen comrade's place over Siesta, poised to snap her neck with a single vicious shake of its head.

"The game's over, Void Mage. It's time for you to come with me, now. Your familiar can't save you here. I'll even be generous and let your friend's carcass go unmolested by my pack for your friends to bury, if they can find her."

"We'll see about that, you bitch!" Louise retorted, raising her wand high. "Please let this work!" she thought.

* * *

 

Saito was growing restless, pacing the cabin floor as the other three sat in silence, sipping on their cups of tea and working through an ancient-looking hand-made jigsaw puzzle together.

"Screw it, she's been gone too long. I'm gonna go find her," Saito blurted, grabbing hold of the doorhandle. "Tails, you coming?"

Tails shook his head, giving Saito a dismissive wave. "I'm sure she's fine, and she's probably talking things over with Siesta. I'm sure she'd appreciate talking to you in private. Come back and get me though, if she's in danger."

Saito nodded and stepped outside, slamming the door shut behind him. Tails returned his attention to the puzzle, gathering a handful of pieces and sorting out any remaining edge pieces from the pile. Within minutes, the frame and a large portion of the inside was filled in, illustrating a large cherry tree in bloom, with a few soft pink petals frozen in their fall from the branches. Tabitha stood from her chair and walked slowly toward the door, capturing Tails' attention. He turned back to the puzzle momentarily, considering his options.

"Pardon me for a moment, I think Tabitha wants to speak with me," Tails stated to Tiffania. He picked up his half-full mug of tea and stepped outside, gently shutting the door behind him. Tabitha was standing a little ways out into the clearing, watching the stars and moons above her. Tails stepped up close next to her, watching the stars as they curled through the sky at their imperceptibly slow rate, consistent as always.

"I'm sorry," Tabitha stated, her voice low and respectful as always.

"For what?" Tails asked, not turning away from the stars. "You did what you thought was right. I may have been killed if it weren't for you. I'm just disappointed in how it turned out, that's all."

"You aren't mad?"

"Not really. It's always sad to see someone die, no matter how well you knew them, if at all. But, I can't really hold anyone responsible for that. I chose to put myself at risk, he chose to try to take revenge, you chose to protect me. It's as simple as that, unless you're implying there's more… is there more?"

Tabitha stood in silence, turning to face Tails. "An elf drugged my mother," she stated, impartial and resolute. Tails turned to face her, taking in her cold eyes and the stone-like stillness of her body. What sounded like thunder rumbled in the background, but Tails paid no mind.

"I'm sorry to hear that," Tails said with a sigh. "I suppose this is a bit of Professor Colbert talking, but I don't support revenge. As much as I'd like to go back and get even with everyone that was involved in forcing me to kill Cosmo, I don't think I could bring myself to do it, and trust me, I used to think about it almost every night. We’ll get her back to normal, alright?"

A series of pops rattled out in the distance, catching Tails' attention. A green portal stood before him, similar to the bubble that brought him to this new world.

"Uhh, Tabitha, you seeing this?" Tails asked, pointing at the portal. Tabitha leaned out beyond him to look in the direction he was pointing, focusing clear into the distance. She shook her head, unable to find anything unusual.

"Well, I may just be tired," Tails said, giving his eyes a quick rub. The portal still stood when he opened his eyes once more, beckoning to him instinctually. "Nope, I'm not seeing things. There's a green bubble like the thing that brought me here standing right in front of me. I think that means Louise is in trouble. Go find Louise out in the woods and meet us there, we may need your help."

Tabitha nodded, running off into the woods. Tails took a deep swig of his mint tea, finishing off the sweet-smelling drink with a burning gulp as he tossed the empty mug aside. With a quick touch, Tails and the portal disappeared in a flash, filling the night sky with a brief, powerful light.

* * *

 

In an instant, Tails found himself stepping onto soft grass, on the other side of the portal. He quickly took a check of his surroundings, noting Louise and Saito standing before him, kissing. A wolf leaped out of the corner of Tails' vision, lunging for Saito, but was quickly intercepted by a stroke of Ring's blade. He fished in his bag for the first bomb he could find and lobbed it at the nearest wolf, setting it ablaze with the smell of napalm and burning fur. The burning beast took off across the ring, blindly ramming into its comrades and spreading the sticky, burning goo from beast to beast as it searched for an escape from the pain.

"Impossible!" a voice cried, catching Tails' attention. He looked up to see the same lady and flying manta ray, with their signature purple glow radiating into the night. The duo attempted to turn and flee, but Tails was quick on the draw, reaching into his bag for a cluster bomb and lobbing it at the duo that filled the sky with light. With a roaring series of pops like the sound of cooking popcorn magnified a thousand times over, the bomb went off, engulfing the lady and her mount. When the blasts subsided, the duo was nowhere to be seen, leaving behind the pack of wolves to finish their prey. Saito was now on full alert, hacking and slashing his way through every monster that lunged at him with ease. Tails followed suit with Ring, allowing the colored blade to bite deep into every beast that came within range. It wasn't long until every wolf was dead or scattered into the forest, leaving the three standing alone in the woods.

"You guys alright?" Tails stated as he turned to face the two. The body on the ground near Louise caught his attention, causing him to panic. "Is that… oh, shit!"

The three knelt around Siesta's body, watching her closely. Tails held two fingers to her neck, checking for a pulse. To his relief, a strong heartbeat was present, with a shallow breath to accompany it. Saito rolled Siesta over, revealing a large cut across her forehead where she had landed. A small, rough rock sat beside where her face had been laying, covered smears of blood on it.

"She may have a fractured skull from that, if she landed right on the rock," Tails suggested, picking up the stone. "We should get her back to the cabin and let Tabitha take care of that."

Saito nodded and began to pick Siesta up gently by the shoulders, holding her under her arms. Tails stood up to help, but was caught by Louise…

* * *

 

Tabitha had just made it to the edge of the clearing, staff at the ready to engage any remaining opponents. However, no one but Louise, Saito, and Tails stood in the clearing, kneeling over some object on the ground. The air was heavy with the stench of blood and dead bodies where she stood, but Tabitha paid it no mind. She could hear gentle speech between the three, but was unable to make out exact words. Saito stood up with what appeared to be Siesta in tow, with Louise and Tails standing to help. Suddenly, Louise took Tails and kissed him on the lips, if only briefly. A flash of light illuminated the forest on the opposite side of the clearing as his runes flashed into existence on his left hand, causing him to kneel under the sudden pain of the rune-etching.

Tabitha watched with mixed curiosity and worry as Tails regained control of his body. "His runes were restored? I've never heard of that happening," she thought to herself. "But I wasn't there to re-create my part of the pact with him? Perhaps he's not my familiar anymore? Will I be able to re-initiate our contract after the runes were etched?"

She disregarded the notion, but it continued to nag on her as she walked back to the cabin. "I wasn't there to sign the pact with Louise. She beat me to it, so she has total control over him. But what about me? Shouldn't I be happy for him, that he has his runes again? I certainly don't feel it, if that is the case."

She beat the trio back to the cabin by a few minutes, stepping into the fire-lit cabin without disturbing Tiffania's focus on the puzzle. It appeared that she had made some progress while everyone was gone, revealing a boy sitting at the base of a tree opposite the blooming cherry blossom. Tabitha silently walked over, looking over her shoulder down on the puzzle. The boy had his head against his knees as he sat against a tree, as if he were crying or sleeping. It reminded her of Tails, the way he had broken down after she killed that elf boy. "I wonder if Tiffania would be mad about it, too," she thought. Finally, the group made it home, carefully holding Siesta as they carried her into the cabin and set her on a chair. Upon recognizing what happened, Tiffania shot out of her chair and rushed over to Siesta's side, inspecting the damage on her head.

"What happened out there?" she asked, walking over to the cabinets to fetch a fresh cloth. She took it over to the fireplace and dipped it into the remaining hot water, wringing it out to remove the excess water. She placed it gently on Siesta's head, wiping the blood and dirt away.

Saito looked over at Louise, receiving a nod of agreement. "Long story short," Saito began, "we were attacked while on our stroll through the woods. She was knocked over and hit her head on a rock when she fell, which knocked her out cold. It may be a fractured skull, we aren't sure."

"That's terrible! Do you know who it was?" Tiffania asked, re-folding the rag to expose a clean face of the fabric. Tabitha gently pushed her way into the crowd and began chanting a healing spell, her glowing blue staff bathing the room in its light.

"No, we don't know who, unfortunately. A magic user, someone who has the power to control animals of some sort," Tails replied. "Rides around on some flying thing that looks like a manta ray."

"What's a manta ray?" Louise asked.

"I remember seeing one in an aquarium when I was a little kid, back home," Saito replied. "They're really big sea creatures that swim by flapping parts of their bodies like wings, right?"

"Yeah, that's them," Tails stated. "Anyways, we should let Siesta rest while Tabitha works her magic. I'm headed to bed as soon as Tabitha's done."

"I'll get some beds set up," Tiffania added, walking over to the far end of the room by the door, where a large chest sat. She withdrew many large quilts and began moving furniture, clearing several clean spaces on the floor for the bedding to be set up. "Miss Siesta can take my bed while she recuperates. I only have one proper bed, however…"

Saito shook his head. "Don't worry, it's not a problem at all! We'll be glad to take whatever you can offer."

Tails, with Saito's help, slowly lifted and carried Siesta over to a bed sitting in the back-left corner from the door. Tabitha walked slowly as she sustained the enchantment, taking a seat on the edge of the bed next to Siesta's feet. Tails sat on a chair nearby as Louise, Saito, and Tiffania all took a quilt and a spot on the floor.

It wasn't long before Saito's snores filled the room, something Tails had never noticed before. He looked back over his shoulder to see Saito being stretched on his back, with Tiffania and Louise both cuddled close to him on either side. He thought about waking Saito to let him attempt to free himself, but decided to let them get their rest instead. He turned back to Tabitha and continued to watch her for an hour until she drifted off into sleep, exhausted from maintaining the spell after the day's events. He let her rest for a few minutes until he was sure she was fast asleep to ensure she wouldn't wake her, then gently picked her up and carried over to an open quilt, laying her out gently. When she was comfortably asleep, he crept back across the room to fetch her staff, returning it to her side. Satisfied that everything was settled, he took a seat on his own quilt and slipped Ring's sheath over his head, laying back on his soft padded bedding.

"Ring, wake me up if Tabitha freaks out again tonight. Everyone needs their sleep, so I don't want her waking anyone up," Tails thought.

"Alright. Get a good night's sleep. I'll let you know if that lady comes back," Ring broadcasted in response.

With that, Tails shut his eyes, letting the crackle of the dying fire lull him to sleep.


	63. Season 3 Chapter 5

Tails was the first to wake up, noting the bright morning light filtering through a thin cloth curtain covering a far window. The trees were shimmering in a light morning breeze, urging Tails to step outside and join the day. He slowly crept to his feet, ensuring not to disturb anyone as he donned his shoes and gloves. Slipping his rucksack of gear onto his back, he cracked the door open and slid outside, shutting the door behind him. Looking around at the deep green woods, he took a deep whiff of the morning air, enjoying the fresh, earthy scent of the forest. With nothing else to do, he stretched a bit as warmup before leaping off of the porch into a brisk jog, taking to the air with his tails as he approached the tree line of the clearing.

"Beautiful day, huh?" Tails thought to himself. Only the sounds of the living forest replied; after flying a ways away from the cabin, he guessed that he was out of Ring's reduced telepathy range, giving him mental freedom for a while. He soared through the air around the forest, occasionally dropping below the trees to dart along the forest floor, bouncing between trees like a speeding pinball. After completing his hasty journey around the forest, he returned to the cottage, gently landing in the clearing just before the front porch. He slowly opened the door and slipped in, kicking off his shoes next to the doorframe.

Not to his surprise, no one was awake yet – he’d hardly been gone twenty minutes at best, and the room was still dim. He walked over to the fireplace with uncanny silence, thanks to his padded feet, and gently lifted the kettle from its stand over the lifeless ashes of last night’s fire. Careful not to let the hinged handle of the kettle squeak, he carried it back outside and dumped the old water out, washing away the morning dew on the grass where he stood. He carried the empty pot around to the side of the cottage where a well was dug, a wooden bucket waiting to be lowered by a manual winch. Letting the line run free until he heard the bucket splash down into water, Tails cranked hard on the old winch to raise the wooden bucket from the well’s depths. A single bucket-load of water filled the kettle nicely, saving him from having to hoist multiple loads.

Carrying the kettle very slowly to avoid spilling any water, he walked back around front to the door and slipped inside once more. By now, Saito was getting restless, the heat of his two female companions clinging to either arm making him uncomfortably warm. Tails quietly crossed the room to the fireplace and gently hooked the kettle into its hanging stand over the ashes. There was a small selection of logs and a wicker basket of kindling and char cloth to the right of the stone fireplace, which he quickly used up to build a basic log arrangement, ready to be lit. Without thinking, he reached into his bag for an incendiary grenade and armed the device, ready to toss it into the fire, but caught himself at the last moment. He set the bomb aside, shaking his head.

"Dang, just about burned the house down. Waaay too overpowered for starting a fireplace," Tails thought to himself. He walked over to the kitchen area of the room and began searching through the drawers for a fire-starting kit. A final drawer on the far end of the shelf yielded a chunk of flint and tempered steel, both well worn from use.

"Perfect, just what we needed," he thought to himself. He walked over to the assembled fireplace and began clacking away with the two chunks. Behind him, he could hear someone rustling around, waking from their sleep. He turned to see Tabitha standing on her quilt, stretching out the cramps and soreness of her sleep on the floor. A few more strokes from the flint and the char cloth caught fire, lighting up the kindling into a bright blaze with a fluttering sound.

"Morning, Tabitha," Tails whispered, crossing the room to replace the flint and steel in their drawer. Tabitha replied with a sleepy nod, looking over to where Siesta lay on the bed. She collected her staff and walked over, beginning her chant from last night once more. Tails took a seat in a chair by the fireplace, watching Saito as he struggled to get free of his feminine imprisonment in his final moments of sleep. His eyes slowly opened, taking view of the morning light and the wooden ceiling. He looked to either side of him, taking in the precariousness of his situation

"Tails, help me!" Saito whispered urgently. Tails rose from his chair and walked over to where the three were laying, taking in the situation. Saito's arms were firmly locked in the sleeping grip of either girl, with both of them latched onto him like a sleeping pillow.

Tails shook his head. "Not much you can do. Just hold incredibly still and maybe shake your right arm a little bit to see if Tiffania will wake up first," he suggested. "If Louise wakes up first, you're doomed."

Saito nodded slowly and tried gently shaking his arm, but froze in place for some reason. A sly grin crossed his face, indicating to Tails something was up.

Tails stooped down to pick up the incendiary bomb he'd left by the fireplace, observing its design. "If your hand is somewhere it shouldn't be, Saito, I'd suggest not doing anything. She's our host, alright?"

Saito let out a low laugh. "No, it's not that bad. Just a funny thought, that's all."

"Whatever you say," Tails said with a shrug. "I'm gonna go bury and detonate this unused incendiary so we don't accidentally burn down the forest. I'll be right back."

Tails stepped outside, holding the silvery-grey bomb in his hand. He looked around on the side of the house where the well was for any kind of digging utensil, but was unable to find any. "Whatever, I'll just have to dig by hand, then," he thought to himself. He walked a ways out into the clearing until he found a suitable spot where the grass wasn't as dense and began digging, handful by handful.

* * *

 

After about twenty minutes of digging by hand, Tails had created a hole about the depth of his arm and just wide enough for him to stand in. He set the incendiary gently in the bottom of the pit and began pushing dirt back into the hole, neatly backfilling until the dirt was just about level with the grass. He took several steps back and pressed a button on his wristcomm. Almost instantly, a muted *FWUMF* resounded from the ground as the incendiary bomb's small explosive component detonated, causing the dirt to rise slightly with the small blast wave. However, none of the burning napalm gel mixture had escaped, and was rapidly extinguished due to the lack of oxygen deep in the hole. Tails wiped his hands together to knock off any loose dirt and admired his handiwork. "I could have made some good money on the G.U.N EOD team," he thought to himself. "Would've been a good way to repay Mr. Chuck for the Tornado."

The sound of muffled yelling echoed into the woods through the open window, bringing Tails' attention back to the cabin. "Sounds like Louise woke up first," he thought.

"Yep. Mornin', partner," Ring broadcasted into Tails' head. "Sleep well?"

"Well, you'd probably know better than I would. Is it safe to come in?"

"Should be. Tabitha took Louise's wand before she could blow the house up. Siesta's doing great, Saito's in deep shit, and Tiffania's confused and sexy as ever. Everything seems normal."

Tails stepped up to the door and peeked inside, watching as Louise began to use Saito as a punching bag despite her hand injuries from the night before. He stepped inside and worked his way around the scuffle, picking up his mug from the kitchen counter to fill with fresh water from the kettle. By the time he had finished grinding leftover mint leaves for tea, Louise had calmed down enough to stop unloading fists of fury into Saito's abdomen.

“We should get going back to the castle to report to the Queen," she huffed indignantly.

"Is Siesta in good enough condition to walk?" Tails asked. Woken by the sound of her name, Siesta sat up gently in bed.

"Good morning, everyone," she said in her usual cheery tone. "What are we doing now?"

"Heading back to the castle, if you're able to walk," Louise replied, not turning to look at her. She was still sitting on Saito's stomach with an angry look, as if she were ready to resume destroying his internals at a moment's notice.

"Yes, I'm sure I'm fine. We can leave whenever."

Saito let out a groan of agony, eliciting a raised fist from Louise. "What about me?"

"Well, you deserved it for what you did," Louise stated, standing up over him.

Tails took a sip of his tea that he had finished making in the background. "I’m paraphrasing Ring here, since he can’t talk out loud. ‘He didn't do anything. He laid down and both of you cuddled up to him like moths to a light, so you aren't exactly innocent, either’."

“Oh, yeah, thanks for throwing me under the carriage, asshole,” Ring said in Tails’ mind.

“Any time,” Tails thought back, smiling at his trusty scimitar.

"Shut up!" Louise cried, giving Tails the stinkeye. "Anyways, if Siesta's good, we should go. Tiffania, you'll be coming with us, but stay away from Saito or Brimir so help me I'll-"

"Louise, do be polite to your host!" Siesta said, her tone becoming agitated. She immediately regretted her outburst, looking down in shame as Louise turned her angry gaze toward her; it only occurred to her after the fact, that she had just spoken badly to a noble, something she had always been trained to avoid.

"Whatever,” Louise said, ignoring the insult. “Let's go.”

Tails chugged the rest of his tea as fast as he dared as the rest of the group packed up their belongings and filed out of the house. He took the time to wash his mug with the remaining hot water into the roaring fire, making him the next to last out of the house. Tiffania was unpacking a few extra things from a wooden storage chest into a large bag, bulging with goods.

"Would you like me to get that?" Tails asked, shelving his mug.

Tiffania looked back at him in surprise, thinking that everyone else had left. "Are you sure Miss Louise won't get mad? I'd hate to spoil the journey over something small like that…"

"I'm sure. She's just protective of Saito because she sorta likes him, I think."

"Really?" Tiffania asked, slightly disappointed. "Well, I suppose I should stop bugging him if it gets him in trouble."

Tails let out a short laugh as he hoisted the bag over his shoulder. "No, by all means, bug him. It's better she vents her anger on him and not me."

Tiffania giggled a bit. "You're funny, Miles," she said with a smile. "We should get going, we're keeping them waiting."

Tails headed for the door, but Tiffania beat him to it, holding the door open for him. With a nod in thanks, he stepped out of the building, stepping out into the bright daylight once more. The rest of the group was facing him, waiting patiently. Louise was clearly unhappy that Tails was helping Tiffania, but decided it wasn’t worth the energy to be snarky with him. "About time you two came," Louise stated impatiently. "It's going to be a long carriage ride as it is, besides the fact that we have to fetch a carriage large enough in Gotha, which could be a while."

Tails gave her smile. "Chill, the Queen can wait. It's no big deal. Let's just get going."


	64. Season 3 Chapter 6

After hours spent between fetching a suitable carriage and the ride itself, the group finally arrived at the castle. The guards waved the carriage in after inspecting the passengers, confident that they weren't a threat.

"Is it just me, or is security a bit higher than usual?" Saito asked to no one in particular.

"It would seem that way," Tails replied, watching patrols of guards as they roamed the grounds. "Something must've gone down while we were away."

"So, what is the Queen like?" Tiffania asked. "Is she nice? Friendly?"

Louise perked up at the chance to talk about the Queen, even to Tiffania. "Yeah, she's wonderful! She and I were childhood friends, so we are pretty close. I think you'll really like her. Just wait and see."

The carriage pulled to a stop in front of the main door. A knight gently pulled open the main door, gesturing for the occupants to step out. Tails and Saito were the last to step out, taking off after the girls who were already entering the main door. The group weaved their way through the usual corridors and stairs up to the throne room, where Henrietta was discussing something with some unknown decorated officer. Her eyes lit up when she turned to see Louise and the group enter the room.

"Welcome back, everyone!" she exclaimed, putting her conversation on hold with a polite raised finger to the officer. "Was your mission successful?"

"Well…" Louise began. Tails interjected, seeing that she was rather embarrassed. "We did find the source of the magic, and how it was used, but it was a one-time deal. So, we brought back Miss Tiffania, who was responsible."

The Queen looked past Tails and the group to the white hat hidden behind the group, taking in the face that supported it. "I see. Miss Tiffania, it is quite a debt that we owe you for saving these two men. Would you happen to know anything about this magic you used?"

Tiffania raised her head from the spot on the ground she was staring at, locking eyes with the Queen with a tentative smile. "Unfortunately, it was an heirloom that was passed through my family. I don't know a single thing about how it was created, only what it did and how to use it."

Henrietta raised an eyebrow inquisitively. "Could you tell me about this family of yours?"

Tiffania's face flushed red with embarrassment, clearly nervous to talk about herself. "I would rather not in public, if you do not mind."

Henrietta nodded in acceptance. "It is quite alright. If you would rather tell me in person, I can have the room cleared. Would that be suitable?"

Tiffania nodded slightly, still gazing at the ground. "Very well," Henrietta said, turning to the uniformed officer. "General Pottsdam, would you kindly escort our other guests outside? Do get to know them while they are here. They are close friends of mine and our finest task force for delicate situations, so I expect you will be seeing them quite a bit."

"Of course, milady," the officer stated with a bow. He turned to the group and proceeded to the door, holding it open for the group to exit. Tails stepped out into the hall, watching as the officer gently shut the door behind him. "So, you must be the fighters that saved us from the Albian air raid some time ago, correct?" the officer began, turning to face the group. "As you have heard from Her Majesty, I am General Pottsdam. It's a pleasure to meet you all," he said with an outstretched hand.

Tails took his hand and gave it a firm shake, eliciting a nod from the general. "With all due respect, are you…" Tails began, trailing off as he tried to find a suitable way of phrasing his statement. Pottsdam gave him a solemn nod, understanding what Tails meant to say.

"Yes, I am. I was General Porsche's highest-ranking field officer, so I was a natural selection to be promoted, with field experience and whatnot. Honestly, I would rather be out on the field, still. All of the paperwork drives me crazy."

Louise struck a face of contemplation that changed quickly to shock. "Wait, so… Guiche's father is dead?!" Louise cried, a little too loud. A wave of surprise spread among the group, excluding Tails.

"I was there when it happened," Tails began to explain. "It was during the attack on Gotha. When the revolt started, I went to the Queen's temporary room to see if she was alright. A fireball had struck the outside wall of her room, catching Porsche in the explosion when it blew a hole in the wall. He was burning to death when I got there, but I had to get the Queen to safety. There was no way I could save him if I tried."

"Guiche must be feeling terrible!" Siesta stated in sympathy. "We should figure out how to cheer him up some when we get back."

"Well, to tell you the truth, he seemed fine at his promotion ceremony," Pottsdam said, stuggling to keep from laughing. "He was pretty proud of his promotion to the head of the Academy's knighthood program. I'm sure he'll tell you all about it when you get back to the Academy."

Saito let out a short laugh. "Yeah, that sounds like Guiche, all right. At least he's not taking it too hard."

A gentle knock on the throne room door signaled for the group to come back in. Tiffania was returning to the Queen's side when the group entered, waiting to hear the news.

"Well, it seems there is an unexpected development," Henrietta began. "With Tiffania's permission to tell you, it seems that she is a bastard child of the late Duke of Albion, and therefore my cousin." At this, Louise's eyes bulged, but she kept her mouth shut. "She will be spending her time with me here in the castle until we figure out a suitable arrangement for her," Henrietta continued. "I feel it is about time I bring this up once more. Saito, Tails, would you accept knighthood? The documents are ready, as always."

Saito and Tails looked at each other and nodded, stepping forward together. "We've had our runes restored, so we would be glad to," Saito stated. A smile crossed Henrietta's face as she turned to fetch the documents. Each paper had a square box beneath it, with a gold-embossed seal on the front. General Pottsdam took one of the documents and boxes from Henrietta, setting it aside temporarily. He returned with a fountain pen and inkwell, holding them out to Saito.

"If you would be so kind, please sign your name on this document," Henrietta instructed Saito. He took the quill and signed his name in kanji, eliciting a look of confusion from Henrietta and the General. "Sorry, bad habit. My old language. I don't know how to write in the common language."

Henrietta let out a slight giggle at his embarrassment. "It's quite alright. Very few people will ever see this document anyhow, as the cloak and neck clasp will often suffice for authentication."

General Pottsdam popped the latch on the red box and opened it, revealing a dark black-blue swath of fine fabric with a gold neck clasp nestled on top. He removed the cloak and ceremoniously applied it to Saito, making sure not to choke him with the fastener. Henrietta set the red box aside and repeated the process for Tails, giving him a similar cloak and clasp. While it was just the right size for Tails, it covered up his two tails, making it impossible for him to fly while wearing it. It was quite comfortable, though, and made him a bit proud of his new appearance.

Henrietta returned to her throne and fetched her wand, the large, intricate ceremonial mace adorned with a gem on the end encaged in metal. "Saito Hiraga and Miles Prower, would you please step forth and kneel," she said in her most ceremonious tone. Saito and Tails complied, getting down on one knee in front of her. She tapped both boys on the shoulder with her short mace-like wand, being gentle to avoid bruising them with the heavy metal. "I now pronounce you, Saito Hiraga, and you, Miles Prower, as knights of the realm of Tristain. Go forth, and serve me well. You may rise."

The two stood up, turning to look back at the group. Louise was smiling at Saito as Siesta bubbled over with joy in the background. Tabitha watched patiently with her book under her arm, showing no emotion as usual.

Henrietta tapped both boys on the shoulder to regain their attention. "As your first offical mission, I have a message for you to take to Headmaster Osmond for me. Please inquire about any knowledge of a 'resurrection stone'. Please have him send a messenger should any information arise on the topic. It is vital you keep this secret, as any knowledge of such an object in enemy hands could be devastating."

Saito and Tails nodded, returning to the group at the end of the room. "Of course, your Majesty," Louise added with a bow. Henrietta responded with a smile, indicating for Louise to rise. "How many times do I have to tell you not to overdo the formalities, Louise? We're friends. I wish you a safe journey."

"Thank you!" Louise stated with a smile. She ran over to give Henrietta a final farewell hug before returning to the group. After having something whispered in his ear by Henrietta, General Pottsdam showed the group out to their carriage, making small talk with Saito and Louise as they walked through the castle interior. The group boarded the carriage that waited for them, a much more elegant ride than what they had arrived in. A knight sat aside the driver up front, in full shining plate armor as if ready for combat.

"Excuse me, but why are you coming with us?" Louise asked. General Pottsdam gave the soldier a nod, eliciting a salute in response.

"There have been reports of attacks by strange creatures throughout the nation, especially on the western half of the country. Although you are headed east, we felt like it would be suitable to provide you with extra protection, given your… propensity to be attacked, as I’ve heard. We heard from the driver we sent you with as well as from Miss Tiffania that you were attacked twice by such creatures on your mission, so we see no reason why they wouldn't target you again. Besides, George here asked for your escort mission personally."

Tails took a closer look at the knight as he raised his helmet visor, revealing the familiar bushy face he saw at Gotha. "It's good to see you again, Miles!" George stated, extending a hand. Tails gave it a brisk shake and tucked up his cape, using his tails to fly up to the top of the carriage. He took a seat on the roof, stretching out and letting his cape back out. "Mind if I join you up here?" Tails asked.

"Not at all! Ol' Fredric here isn't much of a talker, so I could use the company."

General Pottsdam overcame the brief shock of seeing Tails fly for the first time with a cough, regaining everyone's attention. "In any case, I must return to my paperwork, if I am to finish before the day ends. We wish you a sincere farewell, and a safe journey."

The group said their thanks and boarded the carriage, allowing the General to shut the door for them. With a quick snap of the reins, the carriage lurched forward, rolling smoothly over the flagstones of the path to the castle gate. Tails sat in silence as the carriage worked its way out of town, out into the dirt roads of the country.

Finally, George looked back at him, watching him closely as Tails mused over a thought for a while.

"Well, seems like you're not much of a talker, either!" George stated, attempting to break the ice. "Is something on your mind?"

Tails shook his head. "It's nothing. Just a thought."

George chuckled a little. "Well then out with it! You can't keep all your thoughts to yourself, your brain'll explode. That's what my pops used to tell me."

Tails wondered if he should tell him. "Eh, what the heck. Did anyone tell you about what we talked about in the throne room?"

"No sir, what happens in the throne room stays in the throne room. Selective hearing is part of why we're hired," George stated with a grin.

"Well, did you hear about how Saito and I died during the fight at Gotha, but we were resurrected?"

"You mean that's actually true? I thought that was some weird story someone started spreading to make you guys even more famous. I was callin' people a load o' shit for spreading that rumor, but if it's true, it looks like I've got a lot of apologizing to do!"

Tails nodded. "Yeah, it's true. Anyways, we tracked down the person that did it, to see if we could figure out how they did it to help others. It was a magical item that she used, one that might be possible to replicate, and-"

George raised a hand to stop Tails. "Let me guess, you've got somebody in mind you intend to resurrect as soon as you start making more of these things? Some pretty little lass, I'm guessing."

"More or less," Tails stated in embarrassment, eliciting a grin from George. "But, there are a lot of questions to be answered, first. We don't know how to make them, whether or not the method of making them were preserved, whether it's even possible, and to top it off, if magic works in other dimensions. That's what I was thinking about."

George shrugged with indifference. "Well, I'll let you figure all of the technical crap out yourself, since that's your deal. I'm just here to beat up anything that moves with a long metal stick if it raises a finger at you guys. As for deciding whether or not to bring 'em back, it depends on the circumstances. I'm not a very religious person, but the book of Brimir tells us that heaven's a pretty nice place, and that judgement is his duty, not ours. I'd say if you really love that person, don't do it. They're probably in a better place than we are."

Tails shook his head vehemently. "No, that's not the question. If we can do it, then I'm doing it. She was killed because of the circumstances, one that I know for a fact could have been avoided… I killed her, because she sacrificed herself to weaken the enemy that persecuted her."

George sat in silence, not exactly sure how to comment on this turn in the conversation. Without warning, the old man driving the carriage turned his head and gave Tails a wan smile. "You may think it was an unjust fate for her, sonny, but it was her fate. I would be proud of her. She loved you so much that she sacrificed herself for you. My son did the same for me, back when my village was attacked by raiders. I was visiting my son who was just a young man when a group of bandits came through. I used to be a soldier like George here before I took a knee injury during a fight with some archers, and was recuperating at home. Some raiders came through, but my son went to fight with my old sword and took half of the bastards with him, forcing them to retreat. He was dead from his wounds before the army medics could arrive."

George sat in shock, mouth parted in shock. "Damn, Tails! You got him to speak! No wonder you never want to talk, Fredric. You should've let it out, or you'll never be happy."

Tails sat in silence for a moment, his mind wandering. "So would you bring back your son if you had the chance?" he asked, staring off into the approaching woods.

Fredric shook his head, his flabby neck skin shaking a bit. "No, I don't think I would. He died doing the right thing, so I feel that Brimir's given him a good seat in heaven. Why bring him back down to Earth, if it could cause him to forfeit such a wonderful prize?"

Tails contemplated things for a moment before gathering his thoughts. "I think I would still try to bring Cosmo back, if I had the opportunity. She had a full life ahead of her, to save her species and all. What gave that bastard Dark Oak the right to do what he did?" Anger started to build in Tails' mind at the thought of Oak, causing his fur to stand on end in places.

George shrugged once more. "Well, we can't stop you. You've heard our opinions and you still seem pretty set on bringing her back, so we won't bother you anymore. Just let me know if you need any help whacking people, alright?"

Tails laughed, his bitter mood broken. "Yeah. Hopefully we won't need to go around 'whacking people' as you say, but if someone tries to stop us, I'll be sure to ask."

* * *

 

The remainder of the ride passed with small talk about Tails' new knightood and other things, with Saito occasionally sticking his head out the window to check up on the three. Tails got to know George and Fredric really well as they chatted; George was a heavy gambler that lost his swordsmithing business in debt, becoming a knight to pay off the bills. He took a heavy interest in Ring, commenting on the unusual shape and interesting balance. On the other end, Fredric was a career soldier turned coach driver, being from a family of knights that prided themselves on service to the royal family.

"If you like, I could probably reforge this blade for you, if you like," George offered. "I have access to the royal armory and forges, as I do general repairs for the knights whenever the master smithy isn't around. I could get her re-tempered for you while you fix that tool of yours and have it back to you within the week. Better to do it before it breaks, I'd suggest."

Tails thought about it for a moment before nodding. "Yeah, I suppose I can leave it with you for a little bit. I'll just have Ring jump to some loaner sword or something while you work on the blade."

George gave him a look of suspicion, eyeing the blade that Tails held out to him. "What do you mean, 'jump to another blade'?" he asked, holding the blade. Suddenly, a look of awe crossed George's face as he stared at the blade. "Whoa."

Tails grinned. "I'm assuming Ring just talked to you? Yeah, he's a sentient blade. He can jump from sword to sword while you work on mine. Normally he can talk out loud, too, but his mouthpiece was welded shut when he was damaged," he said, pointing toward the lower metal piece by the handle.

"Interesting," Fredric stated, looking away from the road to take a glimpse of the blade. "What else can he do?"

"He can control my Familiar rune ability, as well as read minds. Using the mind-reading ability, he can act sort of like a map, telling me where people are so that people don't sneak up on me too easily. Sometimes it doesn't work if the target keeps his mind clear of free thoughts, which was how I was attacked in the woods on that mission."

"Interesting. Would've saved me my leg with something like that," Fredric remarked. "Anyways, we're here."

Tails looked over to see Fredric pointing at the Academy as it appeared over the treetops. The carriage transitioned from the forest to the open field surrounding the Academy, bringing the massive stone structure into full view.

"Home sweet home," Tails said with a sigh. "I dunno about you guys, but I'm starving. We didn't have any breakfast or lunch."

George grinned at Tails. "Trust me, you're about to have plenty to eat."

Tails shot him an inquisitive look. "What do you mean by that?"

"You'll see."

As the carriage pulled into the gate of the Academy, every student flooded out from their hiding place behind the wall to surprise Tails and the occupants, cheering his and Saito's name. George turned back to Tails with a smile. "I got word that a messenger was sent ahead of us to tell the Academy to plan a party for your return. You're about to have a feast, Miles!"

Tails grinned as he waved to his newfound fans from on top of the carriage, watching individual faces among the crowd. The roar of cheering became louder when someone yanked the carriage door open, revealing Saito and the girls. Saito stepped out into the crowd with a smile on his face, immediately being engulfed by adoring fangirls. Louise chased after him in an attempt to drive him away from the women, but was instantly engulfed by the women as well. Tails hopped down into the crowd, but was immediately hoisted back into the air by a group of boys. He was carried to the front of the crowd and placed next to Saito, who was standing in front of Guiche and a few other boys.

"Miles and Saito, I would like to formally invite you to the new knighthood corps of the Academy, the Ordine Knights!" Guiche stated with gusto.

"Yeah, I'm in," Saito said, holding out his hand. Guiche promptly shook it and turned to Tails, extending his hand to him. "And you, Miles?"

Tails shrugged and shook hands with Guiche. "Why not? Sounds like fun."

The boys around the two new knights cheered, ushering them inside to their awaiting feast with the crowd of girls hugging close behind. Within moments, the courtyard was empty once more.

George let out a sigh. "I remember the day I was first knighted, but it wasn't nearly as big of a deal. I'm sort of jealous."

Fredric let out a laugh. "Yeah, same here. It's probably how young they are. I wonder if it was the same way for the young lady with blue hair."

George shrugged. "I didn't even notice. How could you tell?"

Fredric turned the carriage around and started on the road back for the castle. "She wasn't wearing the clasp or cloak, but that staff she was carrying… Its shape was similar to the crest of Gallian Nobility. If I'd have to guess, I would say she was one too."

"Whatever. Let's go home and leave them be."


	65. Season 3 Chapter 7

Tails trudged up the endless stairs as fast as his exhausted body would carry him. "Dang, I'm tired. I need to take a nap," he thought to himself. He had just reached the top of the stairs and approached the large door, knocking three times on the heavy wood. "I need to build these people an elevator," he thought while he waited, imagining various designs that might work. He refocused his mind on the task at hand when the sound of bolts and latches being undone rang out from the other side. The door swung inward to reveal Headmaster Osmond, looking as tired as Tails was with bloodshot eyes and sagging eyelids.

"Ah, Miles," Headmaster Osmond said, trying to perk himself up. "Please, come in."

Tails stepped inside, taking a seat in one of the deep, soft chairs that beckoned him to sleep. "What can I do for you" Headmaster Osmond asked, taking a seat at his desk.

"Well, I was sent here on a mission from the Queen," Tails began. "We tracked down the person that resurrected us, and it turns out that she used a magical artifact called a "resurrection stone" on us. It only had two of three uses remaining, so it was entirely spent when we were brought back. Queen Henrietta wanted to know if you would have any information on the matter, especially in manufacturing a new one."

Headmaster Osmond stroked his beard and took a sip from a mug of steaming coffee sitting on his desk. "Unfortunately, any studies on the matter would have been locked up in the underground library. When the bookshelves close together, they are magically bound to prevent access to any of the materials within. Even I cannot unlock them. They were designed to unlock and return to their positions anywhere within six months to six years of activation of the security spell... however, Professor Colbert might have kept copies of the information in his workshop by chance. He was highly interested in such magic, for obvious reasons related to his past. If you are unable to find anything among his study materials, then I am afraid I cannot be of any further help."

Tails slumped back in the chair, processing everything he had just been told. "So it was essentially a one-of-a-kind object that was spent on us?"

Headmaster Osmond nodded. "I'm sorry to dash any hopes you had, but that may be the truth of the matter. I am presuming the Queen would like a written report on the matter from me?"

Tails nodded, looking out through the window behind Osmond's desk to the dark night sky. "I shouldn't have gotten my hopes up, but I did. It's not a big deal now, I suppose," he lied.

"Very well, I'll get on it right away after sorting through this paperwork. Order forms for more supplies, now that the war is over and most things are in regular production, you see."

Tails nodded, lifting himself out of the deep chair with his tails. With a nod and a "thank you", he excused himself out of the office, beginning his descent down the stairs in silence.

"Well, shit. Back to plan A, I suppose," Tails thought. He was bitter that after coming so close to the possibility of resurrecting Cosmo his plan was crushed, more so than he knew he had the right to be. “There’s too many unknowns to even think about getting excited,” he thought grimly. “I’m not even sure if magic would work back home, for starters. Even if we could make another one like Tiffania’s, and I even make it home, I could be on my doorstep and still fail.”

He reached the bottom of the stairs and hiked over to his workshop, stopping in Colbert's old portion of the workshop. Although he had read through almost every document there to the best of his ability in his free time, he took a quick look through the arrangement of journals and dust-covered notebooks once more for any sign of notation about resurrection magic, but found nothing. He set everything back in its place and climbed down the ladder to his workshop, falling into his canvas hammock and taking off his shoes and now-empty sword sheath.

"Ring, you there?" Tails thought, hoping that Ring would respond from whatever weapon he had jumped to. However, there was no response as Tails waited patiently for a voice in his head. With a sigh, he reached over to the wall to push off of, rocking the hammock as he slipped into sleep for the night.

* * *

 

Tails woke to the sound of the trapdoor opening, expecting to see someone he knew, only to be surprised by Ilococoo, once again completely undressed.

"Mr. Miles!" she cried in joy, happy to see him again. She ran over to him and jumped on him, wrapping him in a hug.

"Hey, Ilococoo!" Tails stated with faked enthusiasm, prying himself from her embrace. He got out of the hammock and quickly undid the neck clasp of his cloak. As Ilococoo stood up to follow him, he wrapped it around her, clasping the cloak on backwards to cover her. "You really shouldn't go around naked like that. Someone's going to get the wrong idea."

"Sorry," Ilococoo replied, looking down at the ground to avoid Tails' eyes. "I'm just not used to wearing clothes, and I don't have any of my own, so I always forget."

Tails shrugged. "It's no big deal. Just don't lose or damage that cloak, 'cuz it's sort of important."

"Sure thing!" she stated energetically, nodding her head. "This is one of these cloaks that knights wear, right?"

"Yep, it is," Tails replied, rubbing his eyes. "Anyways, how have you been?"

"Great! I've been sleeping in here mostly while you and Miss Tabitha are gone, and I sometimes go out and eat dinner in the woods. Lots of tasty deer out there, occasionally even a bear! They aren't as good as your cooked food, though…"

Tails laughed at the thought of Ilococoo in her human form wrangling down a bear, even though he knew that wasn't the case. "Sounds like you've been having fun. And no one's been seeing you as a human, right?"

"Yeah! I've only been coming and going during the nighttime when everyone is asleep. No one has caught me yet!"

Tails let out a small sigh. "Well, that's good. Not to be rude, but if you want to go back outside at all today, you should leave now before everyone starts waking up. Otherwise you'll be stuck in here all day.

"Alright! Here's your cloak back," she said, trying to fiddle with the clasp on the back of her neck. Tails walked around and helped her deal with it, averting his eyes when he took it off. As fast as she had come, Ilococoo gave him a quick hug and took off up the ladder, leaving Tails in the silence of his workshop.

"Dang, she's nuts," Tails thought to himself.

"Yeah, no kidding," a voice rang in Tails' head.

"Hey, you're back! How did you get here?" Tails thought.

"I rode in the sword of a messenger from the Castle. I got so absorbed in listening to George's conversation with Fredric that I forgot to hop out of the blade until I was too far out of range. After that, I hopped to the Queen's mace-wand thing and found out from her mind that she intended to send a messenger to the academy, so I hopped into the messenger's sword, and here I am."

"Cool. Any news from the castle I should be worried about?"

"Step outside in about five minutes and take a look. I'm going to sleep, all of that weapon switching over distance was tiring"

Tails put his cloak back on and climbed up the ladder, stepping out into the dim morning light. He could hear Sylphid's wings flapping in the distance as she headed for the forest, away from the prying eyes of students. Headmaster Osmond was standing on the front steps of the Academy doors, taking in the morning sunrise. Osmond caught sight of Tails and greeted him with a smile.

"Come to watch the sunrise as well, Miles?" he asked politely as Tails approached.

"Not quite. I was just told by Ring that a messenger is coming, and is due here in about five minutes. They can't be far, assuming they are on horseback or carriage."

Osmond looked puzzled for a moment. "Ring… I forget. Is that the name of your talking sword?"

Tails nodded. "Yes sir, it is."

Osmond nodded. "I like it. It's got quite a ring to it."

Tails sat still for a moment, contemplating what he just heard. It took a solid five seconds before the pun registered, causing him to inwardly groan. "You were planning that, weren't you, sir?"

Osmond winked at Tails, confirming that he had just walked himself into the worst pun he'd heard in ages. He refocused his attention on the horizon, shielding his eyes when the sun broke over the distant horizon. The world was bathed in orange light and long shadows for a moment, blinding Tails. Soon, he could make out a carriage moving toward them, kicking up dust behind it on the dirt road. It seemed like ages before the carriage reached the front gate, pulling to a stop twenty feet from where Tails stood. The driver dismounted with something in hand, walking over to Headmaster Osmond.

Headmaster took the parchment from the messenger's outstretched hands, inspecting the contents thoroughly. "Very well," he stated. "If it is the Queen's intention, then we will gladly accept a new student."

The messenger nodded and returned to the carriage, opening the door. Tails watched closely as Tiffania stepped out, still wearing her green dress and white hat from the forest. She had her packed bag of goods that Tails had carried from her cottage with her, but nothing more.

"Miles!" she cried in excitement. She ran over and dropped her bag at his feet, embracing him in a greeting hug. "I'm going to be a student here. This will be great!"

Tails awkwardly returned the embrace, unsure whether he were breaking some formality with the Headmaster around. "Yeah, this'll be great, for sure!" he replied. "Not with Louise, though…" he added in his mind.

Headmaster Osmond coughed, causing Tiffania to release Tails and stand to attention nervously. "It's good to see you already have a friend here, Miss Tiffania. Miles can show you around, and you can begin your classes today. I believe it is study hall today, so Mrs. Cheveruse can bring you up to speed in person. We will have an Academy outfit arranged for you momentarily. Miles, show Miss Tiffania around the campus and report to the top floor of the blue-roofed dorm tower, where we will accommodate her for now. If anything new arises, please report to me in my office. Good day."

With that, Headmaster Osmond turned and entered through the main door of the Academy, shutting it behind him. Tails continued to stare at the door for a moment until Tiffania captured his attention again. "Thank you so much for this, Tails," she stated with a bow.

Tails picked up her bag and hoisted it over his shoulder. "Hey, it's no problem at all. Since I'm not a student, I don't have much to do very often. Anyways, we should probably start in the main building, since we're here already…."

* * *

 

Tails' tour of the campus with Tiffania went without much of a hitch, with a few students giving Tiffania an odd glance as they went through their morning schedule. She seemed nervous whenever this happened, but otherwise toughed it out.

"…and this building here will be your dormitory," Tails finished, taking a breath as he looked up at the blue-domed dormitory tower where Tabitha also stayed. "You'll be living in a room on the top floor, so you'll get a nice view but it will be a pain to hike up and down. Let's go get you set up."

Tails held open the door for Tiffania, following her up the spiral staircases to the top floor. A door about halfway down the hall was wide open, indicating which room Tiffania was to take. Tails walked in and set her bag on the bed next to what appeared to be a variety of full school outfits laid out on the bed. Tiffania entered and began admiring the room, checking all of the furniture and supplies in the drawers of various cabinets. "It's great! This will be perfect," Tiffania declared, flicking open the curtains of the far window and observing the view. "Wow, you were right! The view is great!"

Tails stepped out of the door, watching her. "Glad you like it! Anyways, class will be starting soon, so get changed into the school uniform and head to the classroom I showed you," he stated. He began to close the door, but Tiffania called his name. "Umm, I'm terribly sorry to ask this, but I don't think I remember the way to the classroom from here. Is there any chance you could wait for me?"

Tails looked down the hall, as if he were expecting an explosively angry Louise to materialize next to him. "Yeah, why not?" he said with a smile. "I'll just shut the door and wait here in the hall until you’re ready." Tails gently shut the door and took a seat against the stone wall next to the door, drifting off into his own thoughts.

Time passed as Tails hummed to himself as he waited, listening for footsteps should Louise discover him. "It's not if she will, it's when. Surely rumors will spread from all those people that were staring at Tiffania…" he thought. Tails heard a snap and a small yelp from inside the room, causing him to crack the door open and listen. "Is everything alright in there?" he asked.

"Yeah… just fine," Tiffania replied, as if she were short of breath. "How do I look?"

Tails poked his head in to take a look, only to immediately withdraw it in embarrassment. "Uhh, you may want to go for the next size up on everything. Not that it's your weight…"

"Oh," Tiffania stated. "I saw a girl wearing clothes like this, so I assumed it was the standard fashion. She seemed popular, so I thought I would try it."

Tails facepalmed. "If she had long red hair and a dark tan, then it's Kirche. She's what I would call 'socially inclined', so she's always trying to show off in front of guys. Don't imitate her, or you might be under more scrutiny than you care for."

"Ok. Thanks for the advice! There's only one larger size, and it doesn't seem much bigger, but we can give it a go. All of the others were too small…" she said.

Tails shut the door again and took a seat against the wall. "Thank god it's me and not Saito, or he'd die from a lack of blood to the brain after that," he thought to himself. "Of all people she picks to imitate, it's Kirche. What are the odds…"

After a few more moments, Tiffania emerged from the room, wearing a better-fitting shirt that hadn’t lost any buttons. "How about now?" she asked, doing a slow turn to demonstrate the outfit. Aside from opting to tie her cloak on instead of using the clasp, she wore the same short black skirt and white blouse as all the other female students.

"Much better," he said. "We should get going, or you'll be late for class."

Tails led Tiffania back through the school to the classroom, where Tails stopped short before opening the door. "Alright, this is it! I'll be in my workshop out in the courtyard if you need me after class, so feel free to drop by. If I'm not there for some reason, I'm probably in the kitchen getting food, so just hang out there for a bit or go explore the grounds for a while. Tabitha and Louise are both in there, so you shouldn't be totally alone. And, uhh, if you don't mind, don't mention me at all. Louise might get mad."

"Of course! Thank you so much, Tails! You've been a huge help. I'll drop by after class, for sure," Tiffania replied. She gathered herself with a deep breath to calm her nerves and stepped through the door that Tails opened for her, shutting it behind her as she entered.

Tails let out a sigh of relief, glad to be rid of that dangerous mission. "Good thing Louise never saw me. So long as Tiffania keeps silent, she can’t make any silly conclusions," Tails said to himself out loud. He worked his way back down to his workshop, shutting the trapdoor behind him to seal away the outside world. The next piece of the glass canopy mold waited patiently on the printer, having sat there for multiple days. After moving the current part to let the next one begin printing, Tails set to work on his T-Buster, humming to himself…


	66. Season 3 Chapter 8

Many hours passed as Tails worked, giving him time to complete the thermoplastic mold and much of the repairs for his T-Buster. It wasn't quite fixed, but Tails was intent on getting it to pristine condition before the day ended. An interrupting knock on the trapdoor caught his attention momentarily. "Come in!" he called. He heard the trapdoor lift free almost silently as his visitor climbed down the ladder. Looking up from his work, he found Tabitha standing at the bottom of the ladder, her staff and books tucked under her arm. She took her staff in hand and gave it a gentle wave, using a spell to close the trapdoor behind her.

"Heyo! You're a little early, aren't you?" Tails asked, looking at his wristcomm -- not that it told any accurate time, as he had never taken the time to adjust it, but out of bad habit. "I should probably find a clock here and fix that," he thought to himself.

"Noisy classroom," Tabitha stated simply, lying back on the hammock. She was reading a study book, but had her favorite novel sitting next to the bottom end of her staff where it rested against the wall.

"Oh. I'm assuming it was because of Tiffania joining in?" Tails asked, watching her. She nodded and flipped the page in her book, her eyes flicking back and forth across the page, scanning the text at lightning speed.

Tails shrugged and glanced back at his work. "Figures as much. I saw her when she came in on the carriage from the castle… I think I'm going to go boil some water for tea, would you like me to get you something to drink?

Tabitha sat silent for a moment, flipping the page again. Her eyes paused in the text as she processed Tails' question momentarily. "Chamomile," she stated, resuming her reading.

Nodding, Tails hopped up from his workbench and left, leaving Tabitha to her reading. He had just made it out of the front door when he noticed Tiffania surrounded by three girls, seemingly chatting away with her. At first, he thought that Tiffania had made some new friends, started to think otherwise as he overheard more and more of the conversation. Before he could fully understand, though, Saito and Guiche intervened, talking to the three girls. Satisfied that Saito had resolved the issue, he headed off to the kitchen to make his tea and lunch.

* * *

 

Having finished her studying, Tabitha set her book aside and drew her handgun, looking over the design with mild interest – a growing habit of hers when she was bored.

"Does he even know that he isn't my familiar?" Tabitha thought to herself. "Does it even matter? He could continue to serve me without anyone knowing that he might not be…"

Without warning, the handgun’s slide began half-racking itself repeatedly. "If you ask me, I think it's more that you want to confirm it for yourself," Ring's voice stated, filling the metal-walled room. "You're worried that if he finds out that he doesn't have to obey you, he'll leave you. Am I right?"

Tabitha said nothing on the outside, but her mind was racing on the inside. "He's right. I've already lost my mother. Why would I want to lose him, too, when all I need to do is kiss him again, like Louise did?"

"Well, then just do it!" Ring replied, the handgun's slide snapping back and forth. "Kissing him can't be that hard, right? He sure is dumb enough to fall for any ploy you wan-"

Without hesitation, Tabitha racked the slide back and flicked the slide hold-open lever up to lock the slide in place, reducing Ring's speech to muffled mmphs and other noises. She picked up the ejected cartridge from her lap and dropped the magazine, replacing the cartridge to top off once more. "I may not be social, but even I realize how important a kiss is, idiot. Maybe it doesn't mean as much to supposedly inanimate objects such as yourself, but it means a great deal to most human beings, especially women," she thought.

"You know, Miles likes you. I think he would respect any decision you make on the matter, and I don't think he would leave you. Speak of the devil, here he comes now. Hit him with it before he gets absorbed in his work."

On cue, Tabitha heard the trapdoor open as Tails gently climbed down the ladder, holding both mugs tightly in one hand as he descended with the other. "Come on down!" he called up the ladder, raising Tabitha's curiosity. She could see the new student work her way down the ladder very slowly, as if she had never climbed a ladder in her life. Tiffania looked around the room, amazed at the secret high-tech world she was witnessing.

"Wow, Tails… This is crazy! A secret room under the workshop, made of metal! Was this done with magic?" she asked, running around in her too-tight clothes to every little bit and bob that captured her interest.

"Yeah, I had a teacher help me out with it. This is my workshop, the upstairs part was the teacher's. He… no longer works here, but I haven't gotten around to cleaning up his stuff," Tails replied, clearly awkward with the situation.

"I suppose this is my competition?" Tabitha thought to herself. She observed Tiffania closely, watching her every movement as she worked her way around the room. "Seems a bit like Kirche. Mostly superfluous physical attributes, but with a kind, friendly personality instead of hubris. Shouldn't be a huge deal, given that Miles isn't human and isn't attracted to physical aspects. Perhaps that's all he sees in me, just the inside? What if I change? Surely that's something that will happen if we find a cure for mother."

"Babe, Miles'll love you any way you slice it. You just gotta show him that he does, that's all," Ring broadcasted into Tabitha's mind.

"Call me babe one more time and I'll destroy every weapon in a five-mile radius and wipe you off of the face of Brimir’s green earth."

"Whatever. You get my point, right? Just strike right after Tiffania leaves, and you'll be good as gold."

Tails handed Tabitha her mug of tea and took a seat at the bench. He had just begun to work on his bench project again when Tiffania tapped him on the shoulder. "Tails, do you know anything about magic? I tried my best to learn during the lesson today, but I would like some more practice."

Tails shrugged. "I'm not a student, so I don't know the first thing about how to do magic. Maybe Tabitha could help you?" he suggested.

Tiffania turned to Tabitha and bowed to her. "Miss Tabitha, could I ask you for help with magic, please? I don't know the first thing about using it, and would greatly appreciate your help."

"Great, now I have to deal with her. I hope she's remotely competent, or I might go insane without a need for poison," Tabitha thought to herself.

"Chill, Tabitha," Ring broadcasted. "You're just upset about this whole deal with Tails' familiar status. Try to be nice and make friends, alright?"

* * *

 

Tabitha nodded, sitting up from the hammock to retrieve her staff. She traded her handgun for her other book and began climbing the ladder, with her books wedged under one arm. Tiffania followed, slowly climbing up the ladder and out of the workshop.

"Looks like they'll get along well," Tails thought to himself, returning to his work. Hours flew by as the fox worked away at his workbench, cleaning up all of the parts and pieces of the dis-assembled T-Buster as needed. Despite a small snack break, he managed to rebuild the T-Buster by evening. A quick tap of a button on his wristcomm, and the T-Buster disappeared with a gentle pulse of light.

"Whoooaaa, so this is what it's like to be in another dimension!" Tails could hear Ring broadcast into his mind. Tails realized that Ring had jumped to his T-Buster before it was stowed, filling him with panic. He quickly re-summon the red laser cannon with his wristcomm, looking over the device to ensure it was safe.

"That was a crazy trip, man," Ring broadcasted, having no suitable speaking piece. "I wish you could try it. Outta this world, for sure. What was that?"

Tails let out a sigh of relief. "I don't have a scientific term for it yet, but a book I read back on Earth called it a hammerspace. How it got its name is beyond me, but it's essentially the space between dimensions that can be harnessed to store objects. Chaos energy can send things into hammerspace, as my friend Sonic could tell you. He had some weird visits with some guys way back when that lived in hammerspace named Al and Cal, but I haven't heard of them since. I'm just glad you didn't get stuck there."

"Alright, whatever. I'll jump back to Tabitha's handgun until you get your sword back. Shouldn't be long, right?"

"Yeah, hopefully. I'm gonna go see what we can do about dinner, since I skipped lunch, so I’m starving," Tails said to himself. He walked over to the ladder and began to climb, but stopped himself and dropped back down. He put on his sword sheath and tucked Tabitha's handgun into the open slot, releasing the slide. “Looks sorta silly,” he thought, “but better than nothing.”

He climbed up the ladder and stepped outside, taking in the crisp evening air. His stomach growling, he walked over to the kitchen, expecting to have to scrounge up something from the pantry, only to be greeted with a bear hug as soon as he stepped in the kitchen.

"Miles, my young knight! How have you been?" Marteau's voice boomed, applying intense pressure to his spine in a back-breaking embrace.

"Fine, I think. A little less so if you break my back right now," Tails replied, returning the embrace as best he could.

Marteau let the fox go, stepping back. "You must be hungry! Most of the staff are out serving the tables right now, but we can whip up something good for you with what's left, no doubt."

"Thanks, Marteau. I'd appreciate it," Tails replied, stretching for his toes in an attempt to undo the damage to his spine. He tucked his cape up and took a seat at the cutting table as Marteau took a bowl of soup from the pot prepared for students. Like a machine, the chef reached for ingredients without so much as glancing at them and added them to the pot; Tails realized he had, of course, memorized the precise locations of everything, just like he had grown to do out of habit at his own workshop back home. Cooking in the new ingredients with a few short bursts of fiery heat from the magic stovetop, the stew began to give off a wonderful new aroma. As it neared completion, Marteau ladled out a bowl of soup and set it in front of Tails with a polished metal spoon, watching closely as the fox took his first bites. Tails' eyes lit up in delight.

"Wow, Marteau, this is great! I should expect as much by now, but you get me every time," Tails joked.

Marteau nodded, proud that his favorite customer was satisfied. Tails finished his meal in relative silence as Marteau went back to preparing various desserts, with the smell of pies occupying Tails' nose and mind. When he had cleaned out his bowl, he set it in the dirty dishes bin and stated his thanks once more before stepping outside. The sun was starting to set, the shadow of the perimeter wall slowly stretching across the lawn it surrounded. Tails let out a yawn as the fatigue from a long day of work and a warm meal set in. "I should get to bed early, since I finished the T-Buster," he thought. "I can get Mrs. Cheveruse to do the canopy glass tomorrow, if she's free."

Tails was about to enter his workshop when he heard a voice call for him. He turned to see Kirche running over to him with a smile on her face. "Hey Kirche, what's up?" Tails asked, covering his mouth from another yawn.

"Not much. I just wanted to let you know I am heading back out on another trip to Germania, and I wanted to see if you would want to come. Besides, I feel like I haven't talked to you in ages."

Tails looked back at the workshop, thinking whether or not it would be good to leave his work as-is. "When do you leave?" he asked.

"Tomorrow afternoon is when the carriage arrives. It's a shame that I might be missing the Ball, but it's important family matters. I just thought you might like to come see Germania, since you've now been to Louise's and Tabitha's homes."

Tails shook his head. "I don't think I can come this time around. I have some pretty critical work I need to get done on the X Tornado tomorrow, and that'll take the whole day and possibly plus some."

"Oh," Kirche stated, a little disappointed. "Well, since you're going to bed, at least come spend the night with me. I'd like to chat a little before I go, in case you get yourself killed again," she added in a humorous tone.

Tails nodded and followed Kirche off to her dorm, taking a seat on a chair at the table. He waited patiently as Kirche changed for bed, focusing his attention on the various decorational objects around the room.

"So, how have you been?" Tails asked nervously, keeping his eyes averted. Kirche noted his awkwardness and looked down at herself. "Does me being dressed like this really bother you that much?" she asked. "What happened to that whole 'I'm not human so it doesn't bother me' act?"

"Doesn't make it any less awkward," Tails replied.

"Whatever," Kirche stated. She slipped into bed and covered up with her sheets, sticking her head over her pillow to keep covered for Tails. "Better?" she asked.

"Much. Thanks."

"Anyways, to answer your question," Kirche began. "Life's been pretty good. I'm still worried for Tabitha after hearing that story about her mother a while back. She hasn't show any real signs of improvement no matter how I treat her, so that stresses me a little. Classes are a breeze since I'm not an earth mage, so Miss Cheveruse can't call on me too much. Otherwise, things have been going well. How about yourself?"

Tails shrugged. "Chaotic as usual. I got my T-Buster fixed after dying, and finished helping Tiffania get situated. Under orders from Osmond, of course."

Kirche was surprised. "You know that girl? Where is she from?"

Tails thought about things for a moment, trying to find the best way to arrange things. "Long story short, she's the one that brought me and Saito back to life using a one-time-use magical relic. I'm pretty sure she was sent here on orders of the Queen to figure out how to make more of those relics, but that's just a guess."

"Wow, so you go a little ways back with her. I don't like her that much. She's too showy with that body of hers. It makes me a bit mad just thinking about it, to be honest."

Tails laughed. "What's so funny?" Kirche asked.

"It's just that, when I was taking her on her tour, she saw the way you were dressed and tried to imitate it when she was picking out a school uniform. You're part of the reason she's like that, besides the fact that all of the other sizes of school uniforms were too small."

"Too SMALL?!" Kirche exclaimed, a hint of anger creeping into her voice. "That's insane! They should make her a bigger size so that she doesn't show so much. Even I'm not THAT bad. It steals the spotlight, you know? Then again, she's stealing the spotlight in more ways than one."

Tails' curiosity spiked. "What do you mean by that?"

"Do you know Beatrice, short blond-haired girl that looks a bit like Montmorency?"

Tails racked his brain for any image of the girl, but came up blank. "No, but I know what Montmorency looks like, so it shouldn't be too hard to find her. What is she doing?"

"Well, she's the princess of a tiny country sandwiched between Gallia and Tristain, so she's a bit of an attention whore, to put it bluntly," Kirche stated with distaste. "I honestly hate her, but no one says anything. She's got a body of personal guards that are some of the best-trained I've seen. They would put all but the finest of Germania to shame, as much as I hate to say it. Anyways, she's jealous that Tiffania's been stealing the spotlight with the guys, so she's trying to shame her. Mocking her dress, her hat, her shyness, et cetera, et cetera."

An image flashed into Tails' mind of when he saw Saito and Guiche talking to those three girls around Tiffania, remembering one of the girls having blond hair. "Does this Beatrice girl have two other crony friends with her at all times?"

"Yep, that's Beatrice and her friends. Her friends are nobodies that just suck up to her for status and promised power. Don't listen to a word any of them say, but don't pick a fight with them, either. Beatrice isn't afraid to use those guards, and they're probably a little TOO good at what they do. I remember the first year she was here, her guards left some poor kid in the infirmary for a week for accidentally knocking her books down."

"Jeez, that's brutal," Tails said, cringing at the thought of a mauled kid sitting in a hospital bed. "Thanks for the tip. I was told by Headmaster Osmond to keep an eye on her should anything happen. It looks like I might be dying again sooner than I thought," he joked.

Kirche simply stared at him without sympathy. "It's no joke, Tails. Those guys are serious. That being said, if you're going to fight, go all out. I would enjoy seeing that little bitch lose before I head off tomorrow, if possible. She needs to be knocked down a rung, if you know what I mean."

"I'm not some social-status hitman, but if it's to keep Tiffania safe, then I'll do it," Tails stated. "Anyways, we should get some sleep. You've got your trip tomorrow, and I may have a fight."

Tails got up from his chair and walked over to the end of Kirche's bed to pick up the pile of clean bedsheets. With a quick flick of his wrists, he spread out the sheets and quilts to lay down on. He undid his cape and took off his shoes, taking a seat on the quilt. Within minutes of laying back, he was deep asleep.


	67. Season 3 Chapter 9

Tails woke up, extremely hot for some inexplicable reason. He cracked open his eyes to find himself staring into the deep golden eye of Flame, his scaly salamader body cuddled up next to Tails.

"Morning, Flame," Tails whispered, patting him on the head. Flame let out a low, throaty rumble of pleasure as he slowly scuttled away from Tails to give him room to stand.

Tails was pleased to find that he hadn't ended up in Kirche's bed for once, having gotten a full night's sleep without any awkward encounters. He slowly crawled out of bed and made for the door, sneaking out silently. He made his way down to the kitchen, silently walking in and beginning his search for the ingredients sheet. The cooking staff hadn't invaded yet, making his search relatively short and easy. He nicked a couple of various fruits from their respective buckets and wrote them down on the sheet, re-writing inventory numbers to account for what he had taken. With an armload of fruit, he stepped back out into the morning light, munching on a fresh apple. Students were slowly filtering into the dining hall for the morning meal.

"I wonder how Tiffania's doing. Hope she isn't late for class," he thought, stepping into the workshop. He took a seat at the wooden workbench, setting his fruit in a relatively clean spot as he selected a dust-coated journal Colbert had left. He finished off the apple he had started on and began leafing through the pages, scanning for information.

* * *

 

Hours passed as he worked his way through every journal, every text, and every chart that Colbert had left behind. Tails was down to the final stack of journals, his hope waning with every book he closed without results.

Tails picked up a notebook on the top of the final stack, flipping open a few pages. "Let's see… Flight-granting charms, that's useless… philosopher's stone, augmenting magical powers? That might do it, let's see… thirty thousand people sacrificed. Jeez, that's dark. It doesn't even say anything about resurrection, so that's useless…" Finally, one paragraph caught his eye, written in Colbert's personal writing. The title was circled with red ink, indicating its importance.

_Possible methods of raising the dead:_

_Magic Stones: Practically nothing known about these, only rumors of their existence. All sources indicate elven magic. Would correlate with elvish affinity for magical artifacts compared to raw user-based magic as well as secrecy on elvish artifacts._

_Phoenix Down: Historical records indicate adventurers used feathers of Phoenix-esque birds to save members of their party either when knocked out, or even immediately after death. Immediate recuperation required, and seems to be time-sensitive._

_Magic: Use of Philosopher's stones to augment rare curative magic has been noted as effective for raising the dead. Ring of Andvari frequently noted in every document. Used in conjunction to raise from the dead, then free from the Ring's control?_

_Village has been gone too long for Phoenix down to work, and are thought to be extinct. There's no existing documentation of any Philosopher's stones being built, and limited documentation as to their creation. Elvish relic-smiths are notoriously protective of their wares, so hardly any of their products make it to our part of Halkegenia, even the lesser charms. There is little documentation of such a stone existing, much less their capability to produce one._

Tails stared at the book for a moment, contemplating his options. "Phoenix down wouldn't work, Cosmo's been dead for ages too long. We could try to get a magic stone from the elves, but I have no clue where they live, and they sound pretty stingy. We've had the Ring of Andvari before, but that Philosopher's Stone, though…"

Muffled cries caught Tails' attention. He leaped up from his stool and poked his head out of the workshop door, glancing around. By the front gate, men in dark bluish-green armor with odd-shaped staves were marching in formation, with a blond-haired girl in a school uniform at the lead. A mob of angry students were following closely behind, jeering and calling indiscriminate insults as the whole parade marched over to the bathtub that Saito and Tails had built. Tails could see that a one of the mysterious knights had filled it with flowers, grass, and other vegetation on hand.

Stepping out from the workshop, Tails approached slowly as the knight raised his odd staff. Without warning, the vegetation that filled the tub decayed into a viscous black oil, filling the tub to the brim with the liquid. Another knight built a fire beneath the tub and ignited it with a fire spell.

"Alright, listen up!" he could hear the blond-haired girl call. "This is an official inquisition, on behalf of the nation of Luxor. I, Beatrice, the princess of Luxor, shall be conducting this investigation against Tiffania, the elvish scum that dare defile our school!"

Tails' eyes widened as he searched for Tiffania among the group, but couldn't find her. "We shall conduct this trial by burning oil!” the girl continued. “If the elf will renounce her god and accept Brimir, then we shall call off the inquisition. If she does not, then she must pray that her god will spare her this painful death."

Tails barged forward through the crowd, breaking through the circle of knights that surrounded the pot. He could see Tiffania on her knees before the pot, being held to the ground by the heavy armored hands of a couple of Beatrice’s knights. Saito and Guiche darted through the gap that he had created, joining Tails in the spotlight.

"What are you doing?" Tails cried. "She's a student, like you! You shouldn't be doing this!"

"Back off, knave," Beatrice stated, holding her hand out to silence Tails. "This is a matter of the Church and of the Academy. Even a knight such as yourself has no place here."

"Oh god, spare us the bullshit and let her go!" Saito yelled. "Your god wouldn't save you from a pot of oil, either! Why should we expect anything more of her?"

Derf slid out of his sheath. "Bro, you aren't making things any better. It's best to apologize and ask for forgiveness and her release, or fight. Arguing won't get you anywhere."

Guiche let out a short laugh. "As much as my pride tells me that's the wrong answer, it's the most logical. It's your choice, Saito. I say we draw and go for it."

Saito contemplated things for a moment, before finally making his decision. He pushed Derf back into his sheath and bowed deeply, eventually getting down on one knee. Tails followed suit, followed immediately by Guiche.

"Beatrice, your Majesty, we ask that you would please spare us our close friend Tiffania from your inquisition," Saito said through gritted teeth. "She saved us, so it is our duty to save her. Because of this, if you do not accept, we will be forced to draw."

Beatrice’s lips curled into a sly smile. "Although I enjoy your humility, I find it unacceptable to allow elven filth on our campus. Luft Panzer Ritter, you may attack the interlopers without restraint.”

The soldiers surrounding the three boys readied their staves, charging spells. With practiced speed, Tails drew his T-Buster and began unloading low-voltage stun pulses into the nearest soldier, leaving him twitching on the ground from the influx of electricity.

Saito drew Derflinger and spun to engage a soldier behind him. Guiche waved his wand to summon a sword of his own out of the ground, taking it by the handle to assist Saito, leaving Tails on his own. The fox switched his T-Buster to plasma cutter mode as a soldier advanced on him, spell charged and ready to release. One quick swipe cleaved his staff in half, disrupting the charged spell. The man attempted to draw a sword, but Tails cut that into bits as well, forcing the man to retreat without a weapon to speak of.

Balls of fire and clods of earth flew as the remaining soldiers launched their spells, forcing the three boys on the defensive. Tails’ shield blinked in and out of existence around himself as volley after volley of dirt and fire exploded against his chest and head without so much as a scratch to show for it.

Suddenly, he was pushed to the ground, a charring pain searing his back for the briefest moment as his shield blinked into existence a moment too late. He turned to see Guiche standing over an unconscious soldier with a massive dent in the side of his helmet. "I've got him," Guiche stated.

Tails refocused his attention forward, gritting his teeth against the burning pain in his back. He could see the remaining half-circle of knights close in around Saito as he advanced. Stowing his T-Buster, Tails drew Tabitha's handgun from Ring’s scabbard and fired twice, clipping two men in the shoulder from behind before they could swing at Saito. With a grunt of pain from his burns, he charged toward the two injured men and took them down with point-blank shots to the knees from behind.

Taking a moment to steady his shaky aim, he raised the handgun once more and fired. The shot connected with the helmet of the second to last soldier, denting his metal helmet and ricocheting high into the air. Beyond the fallen man Tails had just shot, Saito was dueling with the final soldier. Tails watched as Saito took a blow to the shoulder from the magician's staff as he disarmed the man with a quick diagonal stroke at the man's wrist. Tails cringed as the man fell to his knees in pain, holding his broken wrist with his other hand.

The three boys turned to face Beatrice, stunned and in shock at the loss of her personal guard force. "But… my soldiers!" she cried, falling to her knees. Tails watched calmly as Tiffania stood up and walked over to Beatrice, completely unfazed.

"Hey, it's ok," she said, holding out her hand. "We can still be friends, right? Surely I'm not that bad?"

Beatrice looked up, tears in her eyes. She took Tiffania's hand and got to her feet, embracing Tiffania in a hug as she cried. Beatrice's friends started to tear up, as if they were emotionally linked and felt the same way as Beatrice.

"Well, all's well that ends well, right?" Tails thought to himself, looking around at the onlooking students. Mrs. Cheveruse had emerged from the central tower of the Academy with several of the cooking staff and was taking control of the situation, directing some of the waiting staff to carry wounded knights to the infirmary.

"Mrs. Beatrice, I expect no more of this nonsense," Mrs. Cheveruse chided. "I can't keep you from having your father's knight corps on campus if they behave, but I may surely have them evicted if you misuse them. You had no right to perform such awful deeds. This could put you on grounds for expulsion, so keep your nose clean until we decide."

She turned her attention to the three boys who were standing around, helping put out the fire underneath the pot of oil. "Guiche, I would greatly appreciate it if you would clean up this oily mess," she said, gesturing to the pot. "Miles and Saito, since you are injured, I want you to report to the infirmary. No exceptions, no matter how minor it may seem. I don't want anyone having any lasting injuries before inspection coming up soon."

"Yes mam," Saito replied. He turned to Tails with a smile, sheathing Derflinger once more. "Hey, it could be worse, right? An hour or two in the infirmary?"

Tails sighed. "I could be working, but I suppose I could use the sleep."

* * *

 

Tails was lying in the infirmary, separated from the others by a curtain surrounding his bed. The nurse had been gone for a little bit, hauling away a cart of the injured knight's soldiers. Most of them had been knocked out with a sleeping serum, filling the halls with snores and whistles of heavy breathing through open mouths. Tails snuck out of bed and pulled back the curtain separating his bed with Saito's, peeking in to take a look.

"Hey bro," Saito said, giving him a wave with his left hand. He was holding his left shoulder with his right hand. "Feeling ok?" he asked.

Tails gave him a thumbs-up as he pulled the curtain all the way back, taking a seat on his bed. "If I didn't have thick fur, I'm sure it'd be third degree burns to the skin. But hey, it had to be me, right?"

Saito laughed. "Yeah, but aren't you gonna, like, lose fur or something? Some big bald spot on your back?"

Tails laughed, laying back in his bed. "Perhaps. I'd suppose it would just shed over time, and what isn't damaged too bad I could just wash off the ash and call it a day. I'm not worried about it too much. I've been burned a ton and I can't remember it ever happening like that, even with stuff like plasma cutters, hot metal, or even explosions," he said. "If it were, I'd probably still be naked from the day we died," Tails added, laughing again.

Saito chuckled at the thought. Tails could hear one of the soldiers that wasn't knocked out laughing a little down the hall. Suddenly, he heard a door open, causing the room to fall silent. The front curtain to Saito's bed stall parted slightly, allowing Tiffania to slip through. She was changed into her green dress she had worn back home in the forest once more.

"Hey, Tiffania. You feeling ok?" Saito asked. Tiffania nodded slightly, not making eye contact with either boy.

"Yes, I'm fine thanks to you two," she said, twiddling her thumbs with her hands clasped together. "I have a bit of a problem, though…"

"Hey, lay it on us!" Tails said, giving her a smile. "It's what we do, right?"

Tiffania moved to the side of Saito's bed. "I'm worried that everyone is judging me because of… these…" she said, looking down at her chest. "Even the principal thinks they are fake. Could you… find out for me?"

Saito just about lost it, scrabbling back against the headboard of his bed. "Uhhh… I think Tails would be better at this one, if you don't mind. I mean, what if Louise finds out?"

Tiffania turned to Tails, causing him to panic. "Tails? Would you, please?" she asked.

Tails was sweating bullets as fear overtook him. "H-hey, even if I'm not human, touching breasts is a hand-delivered death sentence! Sorry, but Saito can take this one. At least she might go easy on him. She'd probably skin me alive and wear me as a coat!"

A nervous cough echoed down the hall, presumably from the same laughing knight from earlier. "Hey, you can always send her down my way if she's got it good!" he said with a chuckle. Tails and Saito laughed nervously and looked at each other in a silent dare.

"Rock paper scissors?" Saito suggested. Tails nodded. "On three," he said.

"One, two, three!" Tails called. Tails threw paper, trying to force the thoughts of failure out of his mind.

Thankfully, Saito threw rock, a natural fear reaction since his fist was clenched for the counting. "Well, let's get it over with fast, before Louise finds out," he said. Tiffania took a seat on his bed as he slowly reached. He hardly got five seconds of hands-on contact before the curtain slid open, revealing Louise and Siesta.

Tails heard a cough in his mind, realizing that Ring had been tapping in to watch. "Send Saito my regards," he transmitted. "It was Derf's idea, but it needed a bit of a push. Maybe if he's lucky, when he dies he can become one of us sentient weapons."

Tails simultaneously laughed inwardly and cringed at Saito's fate. "Ring, you're a jerk, you know that? You have no idea what you just signed Saito up for," he thought.

"I think you're going down with the ship, too," Ring replied with a growly laugh.


	68. Season 3 Chapter 10

Tails was standing against the wall, watching Saito intently as he sat on his knees before a piece of paper, shirtless and beaten. Neither boy dared to look up should Louise decide to verbally explode again.

Louise threateningly waved her new riding crop at Saito. "Read the document, out loud, verbatim," she commanded.

Saito cleared his throat before beginning. "It is true that I touched Tiffania's breasts in the Infirmary. In order to touch those big breasts, I pressed down on Miss Tiffania although she didn't want to. Then I touched her breasts forcefully. Once Miss Tiffania was struggling, I became more and more excited… and this is a load of bullshit. I never did any of this!"

"Don't lie, you dog!" Louise yelled. "That's a lie and you know it! Keep reading, or we're back to the whip."

Saito mumbled something to himself. "Alright, whatever… In retrospect of this event, I finally noticed that… I don't like big breasts and refuse to touch any breasts for the rest of my life. It's a lie, but there, I read what you asked."

"Sign it," Louise demanded. "Siesta, hand him the quill and ink from my desk."

Siesta looked nervously between the two. "Do you think he really deserves this, Miss Louise?" she asked.

Louise glared at Siesta, making her fidgety. "This is an issue between a master and a familiar. Do what I tell you or I'll dismiss you from the room and have him do it myself."

Siesta slowly walked over to the desk and picked up a small tray with a quill and inkwell on it. Her hands shook slightly as she carried it over to Saito.

Saito gave Siesta a slight smile to reassure her. "It'll be ok. If she wants me to do this, then fine."

Tails watched as Saito dipped the inkwell and set the tip to paper. Saito stared at the paper without moving the quill, letting the ink soak in as a dark blotch on the parchment.

"What are you waiting for? Just do it!" Louise yelled.

Saito thought about it for about three seconds more before finally throwing the quill aside and sliding the tray away from him. He stood up and walked over to the desk to remove his coat from the chair back.

"Where do you think you're going?!" Louise yelled a bit too loudly. "No one gave you permission to leave!"

Saito slipped on his white undershirt and gave Louise a stony glare. "I don't see any reason to stay with someone who can't trust their Familiar. I'm heading out until you cool your head and see some reason." He slipped on his jacket and twisted the doorknob, stepping outside. Louise and Siesta continued to stare at the door long after he had stepped out before finding any words to speak.

"What kind of trust is he talking about? I saw it with my own eyes," Louise said to herself. She glared at Tails as he tried to slip out after Saito, waving an accusative finger at him. "Just because you weren't touching her doesn't mean your innocent, Miles. You let him do it, so you're just as guilty. One slip out of you and I'll be having you sign a contract too."

Tails gave a dismissive wave. "Chill, I'm just going to check on Kirche to see if she's left yet. She was supposed to leave this afternoon, so I think she slipped out while we were in the infirmary."

Tails calmly reached for the door and stepped outside before releasing the breath he hadn't realized he was holding in. "Jeez, she's scary," Tails thought.

"Having a good time yet, bro?" Ring asked, speaking into Tails' mind.

"Screw you. You're supposed to be keeping us out of this stuff, not getting us into it. You could have told us they were coming."

Ring laughed. "Yeah, but it's more fun to see her when she's mad, am I right?"

"No, it's not. How about I put you in the line of fire one day?"

"Fine, whatever. What do we do now?"

Tails took a mental checklist as he made his way down the stairs. "Well, I still have to get Mrs. Cheveruse and a fire mage to help me make the new canopy for the X Tornado, so I thought I would see if she’s free before dinner. If I can't do that, I need to make some more cartridges for Tabitha's handgun, and return it to her. She hasn't spent many rounds since I last saw her use it, so I'm afraid she's not getting enough practice. I do also need to build her a proper holster for it, but I'm not sure how to go about that. Maybe a drop-leg holster? I don't think a waist holster goes too well with a skirt."

"Ah, who am I to know? You just do you, and I'm sure she'll appreciate the gift," Ring stated.

Tails stepped out of the dorm tower to make his way across the green to the workshop. However, he noticed a large group of girls standing outside the workshop door, facing inward. He walked over to the group and worked his way through the crowd to get inside, only to find Guiche, Saito, and many of the Ordine Knights sitting around a table covered in wrapped presents and flower bouquets. Many of Professor Colbert's old supplies were cleared away in boxes, causing Tails to panic.

"Saito, what the heck is going on here?!" Tails exclaimed. He began opening the boxes to dig through, looking for the journal that contained Professor Colbert's notes on resurrection.

"Whoa there, Miles," Guiche said, shutting the box that Tails was digging through. "Don't go undoing all of our hard packing work. Headmaster Osmond gave us permission to use this room as a meeting room for the Knights, so we needed to clean up some."

Tails batted away Guiche's hand and continued digging. "Yeah, well, you just packed away some super valuable research of Professor Colbert's that I was reading and REALLY need to finish."

Guiche shrugged. "Whatever. Most of the books were packed together in some of the boxes on the workbench over there," he stated, pointing across the room. "We need to step outside and deal with our new fan group here, so that should give you plenty of time to find what you need. Just make sure to pack everything back up afterward."

Guiche and the Knights stepped outside to the waiting horde of girls, leaving behind the mountain of presents between Tails and the boxes Guiche pointed out. He popped the lid on a wooden chest and began digging through the stacks of journals, pulling out any journal that looked similar to the one he had been reading. After about fifteen minutes of searching, the journal finally turned up, on the bottom of the box as luck would have it.

Tails let out a sigh of relief. "Well, I suppose it could have been worse," he thought to himself. Making sure that no one was looking, he popped the trapdoor open and slipped down the ladder, shutting the door behind him. He walked over to his workbench and exchanged the journal for his HUD device and a link cable to connect to his 3D printer. He hooked up the two devices and filled the printing queue with orders for brass casings and bullets, spurring the printer into action. Tails disconnected the two devices and walked back to his desk to look over the journal some more, to see if he could glean any new information from Professor Colbert's works…

* * *

 

An hour of text scanning had passed, but nothing new had arisen on the matter that Tails didn't need or didn't already know. He shut the book gently and muttered a silent curse, sliding the book down the workbench. "Well, not much to do now except to get Professor Cheveruse for the glass," he thought. He made his way to the ladder and was about to open the trapdoor when he heard the main door of the workshop open, followed by many footsteps.

"Well, I'd say today was a good haul," a muffled voice stated, followed by a slamming noise. "Too many presents for us to count, and every girl wants a piece of us after that scuffle with Beatrice!"

"You're right, Reynald!" Tails could hear Guiche say. There was a long pregnant pause as Tails strained to hear any sound, but there was none. "Didn't we leave Miles in here? I didn't see him come out while we were outside."

"Yeah, he's probably hiding to do some work," Tails could hear Saito say. Tails wanted to bang his head against the wall in frustration. "Don't you dare tell them where this is, damn it!" Tails thought. "Ring, tell him to go away."

"Do you know where he's working?" Guiche stated.

Saito paused before responding, receiving Ring's message. "Uhh, not really," Saito said. "He sorta just disappears whenever he wants to work on something. I have a feeling he's built himself a place out in the woods or something…"

Tails breathed a silent sigh of relief, but immediately froze as the 3D printer let out a loud chime to indicate its finished status.

"Did you hear that?" one of the boys said. "I thought I heard a bell or something."

"Yeah!" another boy said. "There's a secret room in here somewhere. Let's find it!"

Tails could hear lots of shuffling of the boxes as the boys started moving things around. "Ring, tell Saito to put a box on top of the trapdoor. Maybe that would stop them,"

Almost instantly, Tails could hear the shuffling of a box being pushed on top of the trapdoor, bringing Tails a smile.

"Saito, I think you've found it!" Guiche stated. "Look where you just set that box. The floorboards are cut in a square. That's got to be a false floor!"

Tails could hear the box being slid off of the trapdoor as he dropped down to the floor and walked over to his workbench, resigned to his fate. He collected the dartboard darts on his hand and began tossing them as he heard the trapdoor open, followed by footsteps down the ladder. Saito was the first one down, giving Tails an apologetic shrug. "I did what I could to keep them away. Sorry,"

Tails tossed a dart, impacting the board with a satisfying *thock*. "Hey, you did what you could. It's no big deal. It was the printer's fault, not yours."

Guiche was the second one down, amazed at what he saw. "Wow, Miles, what a base! So this is where you hide out. Metal walls! That must have taken some serious work. And what is this?" he asked, pointing at the 3D printer.

"It's a printer. It builds almost anything I design for me, which saves me a lot of time," Tails remarked. "Is there something you guys needed?"

"Well, there's something that will be happening after dinner. I just wanted to let you know to meet us in the meeting room upstairs after dinner."

The other boys had since entered the room and were gawking at everything that shined. "I'm glad you guys are interested in what I have here, but I need to go get Mrs. Cheveruse for some help, so I need you guys to leave until I get back. I don't want anything to happen while I'm gone," Tails said as he tossed the rest of his darts. He herded the boys back up the ladder and followed them up, closing the trapdoor behind him. He worked his way outside and headed off for the classroom where he knew Mrs. Cheveruse would be. Sure enough, she was standing at the podium, doing some grading for a recent test.

"Mrs. Cheveruse, could I ask you a favor?" Tails asked.

She set down her papers and pen to acknowledge him. "Of course, Miles. What do you need?"

Tails pointed back to his workshop. "I have a custom mold I need filled with glass, and I don't know if there's anyone that can fill it without magic. Is there any chance you could create some glass to fill the mold?"

Mrs. Cheveruse thought for a moment. "I don't see why not. You just need standard glass, correct? That should be easy enough. Let me finish my grading and I will be able to come give you a hand before dinner."

Tails nodded in thanks before silently shutting the door behind him. He worked his way back down to his workshop, setting his cloak on the hammock as he returned to reading Professor Colbert's notes. A half hour had passed until he heard the upstairs door to the workshop open. He rushed to the ladder and opened the trapdoor, popping his head above the floor level to greet her.

"Miles, what is that?" she asked, pointing at the trapdoor. "I don't remember there being an underground section of this building."

Tails smiled. "It's my private workshop. I had Professor Colbert help me build it so I could work without taking up his workspace. Come on down, I'll show you the mold I need filled."

Tails backed down the ladder and walked over to the green thermo-plastic mold, waiting patiently for the older lady to make her way down the ladder. She turned to see the large square of green material that Tails was leaning on, raising an eyebrow in response. "What is this?" she asked.

Tails patted the green square and pointed to the hole in the top. "It's called thermo-plastic. It's a high-temperature-resistant synthetic petroleum product that, when combined with metal wires to create a strong reinforcement, can withstand crazy high temperatures. Since my 3D printer is small, I print it in square chunks that I then use a blowtorch or plasma cutter to weld the interior wires together to create a tight seal that holds the mold together. All I need now is for you to fill it to rebuild the canopy for my X Tornado."

Mrs. Cheveruse nodded. "Do you mind if I carve a hole in the wall? I need to access dirt in order to transmute it into sand for the glass."

Tails shook his head, giving her the go-ahead. With a quick wave of a wand she withdrew from her long sleeves, a neat hole formed in the metal wall, creating a volcano-esque bulge around the gap. Dirt began to flow out of the hole and into the mold, packing tightly until the mold was stuffed full. Another flick of the wand, and the dirt turned to sand in a bright flash, filling the mold to the brim.

"Are you sure about this?" she asked. "I don't want to mess up your mold if this is not what you want."

"Just go ahead and do it," Tails said. "I'll need to do some carving and clean-up for it to fit, anyhow. There's no way the mold can be precise enough initially, what with bubbles and all."

Mrs. Cheveruse nodded and pointed her wand at the open fill-hole, closing her eyes. As she began muttering some incantation, the sand became glowing hot, slowly melting into a molten liquid that bubbled slightly as the air between the now-liquid grains of sand bubbled out. When the bubbling ceased, Mrs, Cheveruse changed the incantation, lowering her wand. The liquid hissed and sputtered as it instantly began to lose heat for some inexplicable reason. Tails watched with awe as the liquid cooled to a perfect crystal-clear glass. He brought up his T-Buster with a tap on his wristcomm and immediately began cutting away the blocks of thermoplastic, revealing a precision-smooth glass surface free of flaws.

Tails stood up, his mouth wide open in shock. "Mrs. Cheveruse, could you explain what you did just there?"

Mrs. Cheveruse smiled. "Well, it's quite simple really. Glass is a byproduct of earthen materials, so we can control it to an extent up until it is completely refined. When magic is used to apply energy at the elemental level, it gains heat, which causes it to melt. Moving the material around sifts out the bubbles, and when all of the impurities are cleared, the energy is taken away by holding the material ultimately still."

Tails began running the numbers in his head. "The mass of the canopy shouldn't be more than a couple hundred kilos, I'd guess. That much sand, brought to melting point that fast… Jeez, that's a lot of energy," he thought out loud. "You said you then make it 'ultimately still'. What do you mean by that?"

Mrs. Cheveruse shook her head. "It's a technique often used by Water mages, but it works well for Earth mages as well. When the object is held still at the elemental level, it becomes extremely cold, which can allow us to make objects brittle enough to break, or hot enough to melt if we work in reverse. Ice mages apply a similar principle by holding water 'ultimately still' for a brief moment, causing it to freeze."

Tails facepalmed, eliciting a reaction of surprise from Mrs. Cheveruse. "Is everything alright, Miles?"

Tails shook his head. "It's nothing, just confusion of terms. What you call 'ultimately still' is reducing the energy state of a molecule to zero, achieving Absolute Zero. When things cool down, they move slower, including atoms. Absolute Zero is when you cool them down so much that the atoms come to a complete stop. It's only theoretically possible in a perfect vacuum where no heat from the outside world is able to get in, but we've yet to make one. I didn't think it'd be possible with magic, though! The possibilities!"

Mrs. Cheveruse smiled. "Well, I'm glad I could be of service. Is there anything else you require while I am here?"

"I can't think of anything right now, but I'll let you know if I need anything," he replied. "Thank you very much for your time."

Mrs. Cheveruse nodded and turned to head for the ladder. "Oh, if you don't mind, please don't tell anyone about my space down here. I'm trying to keep it as much of a secret as I can," Tails added. Mrs. Cheveruse nodded and began climbing, leaving Tails to himself.

He listened closely for the sound of the door shutting before moving, his pent-up energy releasing all at once in a series of fist pumps. "Heck yeah, we're done!" he yelled to himself. He immediately set to work cutting away the blocks of thermoplastic to reveal the completed canopy in all of its beauty.

Tails walked over to the workbench and picked up a variety of socket wrenches and screwdrivers before heading over to the X Tornado. Five minutes of unbolting and unscrewing yielded the metal rim that he would mount to the new glass canopy to create the latch between the glass and the plane. He gingerly removed fragments of broken glass from the metal rim and carried the unwieldy shape over to the new canopy.

Tails brought up his T-Buster's plasma cutter and began drilling holes in various sections of the glass to mount bolts through. The metal rim mounted neatly to the glass, allowing the same machined titanium bolts to be re-used from the old canopy setup. "Normally I would have replaced the canopy with a high-impact bulletproof layered glass, but I don't have the resources on hand to build that. Acrylic would have been too big to build in one pass on the printer, and building it partwise would have left nasty weld-lines throughout the glass. Distraction while flying at supersonic speeds is the last thing I need," Tails thought to himself as he worked.

When the metal rim was firmly mounted to the glass canopy, he gave the glass dome a test lift. Not surprisingly, he was hardly able to budge it with his strength alone. "Wish I had Knuckles back to help. Even if he didn't understand much, he was at least fun to have around," Tails thought. He withdrew a Power Ring from his T-Buster and activated it, granting the strength needed to lift the hundreds of pounds of glass and titanium. He carried it gingerly over to the X Tornado and gently set it down on the airframe over the pilot’s seat, seating nicely on the Tornado's frame. Happy that it was set exactly as he needed it, he dispelled the power of the Ring and retrieved the remaining bolts for the rear hinge, properly connecting the new canopy to the hydraulics that would lift it.

"Time for a test!" Tails thought to himself after tightening off the last bolt. A quick tap of one of the central buttons on his wristcomm engaged the hydraulics, effortly lifting the heavy glass with a slick mechanical sound. "Perfect! Couldn't have gone better. I'll need to redirect more power to that pump for dealing with the extra weight, but that shouldn't be a problem. Now to get the glass cleaned up, and then dinner!"

Tails hopped up onto the edge of the cockpit and began gingerly collecting fragments of glass out of the pilot's seat, making sure to grab every bit and piece he could see. Thankfully, none of the screens or panels had been too scratched up from the falling glass, eliminating any extra repair work. When all of the broken glass had been collected into a small pile on the floor, he hopped down from the plane and collected his cloak as he walked to the ladder, heading upstairs for a good dinner.


	69. Season 3 Chapter 11

Tails rubbed his stomach, sore from stuffing it too full with one of Marteau's tantalizing dinners. Many of the students were already making their way out for the night, but he decided to stay behind and digest with a cup of tea. He sipped on the hot, minty liquid with delicacy to avoid burning himself as he watched the dining hall slowly empty. The dining hall was entirely empty by the time he finished his mug, prompting him to leave as well. He stood up from his chair and waddled to the door, making his way back outside to the star-filled night.

"I should have eaten outside at my table," Tails thought as he stopped to gaze at the stars, his cloak fluttering in the slight breeze. "It's a beautiful night."

Tails thought he heard someone *pssst*'ing him, causing him to look around. After a moment of staring, he was able to make out a face in the shrubbery next to the door. Closer inspection revealed Guiche, hiding in a bush for some obscure reason.

"Miles, come join me for a second," he said, beckoning for Tails to jump behind the bush. Tails obliged, stepping through the shrubs to join Guiche. "What are we hiding from?" he asked the blond-haired boy, staring out into the field.

"We're just biding our time before executing the master plan," Guiche stated. "Malicorne and Reynald are fetching Saito. He hasn't been feeling well after some scuffle with Louise, so we thought we would cheer him up. Is your back feeling any better?"

Tails nodded. "Yeah, much better. Got some private treatment from a nurse with a healing spell that kept me from losing any fur, so that's a plus. I still haven't taken a bath to get the ash out, but otherwise I'm fine."

Guiche slapped him on the back. "Good to hear. Well, lend us a hand and try to be nice to Saito, no matter how he acts. This is for him, and you too."

Tails watched the field patiently until he could make out three boys walking toward the center of the field. Guiche hopped up from his hiding spot and jogged over to the three, followed closely by Tails. Something that Tails had failed to notice in the darkness was a massive hole in the ground, some subterranean tunnel that was new to him.

"Gentlemen, we bring you together this evening to experience a one-of-a-kind thrill," Guiche began, with gusto. "Today, we witness heaven in all of its fine glory. Saito and Tails, as our guests of honor, I insist that you go first."

Saito looked at Tails with a deadpan face – he clearly couldn’t be bothered to care in the slightest. Tails shrugged and hopped into the hole first, sliding down into the tunnel as it curved from a vertical drop to a horizontal cave tall enough to crouch-walk. He could hear the sound of shuffling dirt as the other boys took the drop, sliding into the tunnel behind him.

"Keep going forward until you reach the end," Guiche whispered. "It shouldn't be too far."

Tails drew his T-Buster and maintained a low charge for a dim light to see a ways ahead as he crouch-walked. Eventually, he could make out a dot of light at the end of the tunnel. A stone-brick wall appeared before him, with a small circular hole carved into it. Steam flowed out of the hole gently, filling the tunnel with moisture. Tails could hear gentle sounds of splashing water through the crack, indicating some sort of hot-water reserve.

"Feast your eyes on heaven, gentlemen!" Guiche whispered from the back of the tunnel, leaning up against some object. Tails disengaged his T-Buster and pressed his eye up to the hole in the wall, taking a moment to re-focus his eyes to the light. What he saw astounded him.

Inside the wall, stone and fabric-cushioned sauna chairs formed a ring around a large body of warm water. There had to be at least one towel-wrapped girl per five square meters as they chatted in the water, on the chairs, or slowly walked around the room. Tails could make out Louise sitting in the water, and Tabitha reading a book on one of the sauna chairs on the far end of the room. Montmorency and Beatrice were momentarily visible through the crowd, too.

Tails sat back and pushed himself to the end of the line. "You guys are as dumb as I thought," he remarked. "If they find us, we're dead, no questions asked. You guys are taking a huge risk here."

Guiche's eyes sparkled in the dim light of the peephole before someone took it. "You have to live dangerously to live exquisitely, don't you?" he stated. "It's all thanks to Verdante here," he said, patting the large mass he was leaning against. Tails looked closer at the object and was greeted by the large black eyes of Guiche’s mole-like familiar, its massive nose quivering with every movement of its head. Tails patted Verdante on the head in thanks, receiving a few soft grunts of appreciation in return.

The other boys took turns watching the world of perverse beauty unfold in front of them, vying for the spot. An odd smell filled the tunnel, but Tails paid it no mind, assuming it was just Verdante letting gas after eating all of the dirt for the tunnel. The boys started to become more aggressive with possession of the hole, pushing each other out of the way to get a glimpse of their prize.

Suddenly, all of the boys went silent. "Hey, I think I hear a guy over here," a feminine voice stated in surprise. The light suddenly went dark as a girl on the other side tried to peer into the dark tunnel, unable to see anything.

All pandemonium broke loose. Every girl on the other side screamed in discordant unison, followed by a stampede of feet on stoneas they rushed to get dressed and head outside to confront their oppressors.

"Full retreat!" Guiche whispered in a panic, scrambling past Tails for the entrance. The other boys followed, with Tails and Saito taking up the rear after being pushed to the back. Guiche scrambled up the vertical dirt incline by using his earth magic to condense the wall into reasonable footholds. Reynald darted up the ladder and turned to extend a hand to Malicorne, who was struggling to get up the ladder. Suddenly, the compacted dirt footholds broke, sending the fat boy plummeting to the bottom, right on top of a waiting Saito.

"Damn it, Malicorne! Come on, try again!" Guiche said, waving his wand to erect new footholds. Malicorne tried again, but couldn't quite make it before his weight broke the footholds once more.

"Shit, I wish I had my bombs on me," Tails said. "I could've just blasted through the bathroom wall now that they've all left the bath."

Guiche had a brilliant spur-of-the-moment idea. "Verdante, go dig through the stone bath wall to let the others escape!" he called. Tails could hear him gasp as the cry of feminine warriors filled the air. "Good luck!" he called, booking it for the hills. Saito, Tails, and Malicorne booked it for the end of the tunnel, where Verdante was already clawing at the stone.

"Alright, boys, listen up!" a girl called down into the tunnel. "Come out now, and we'll spare your lives. Resist, and we torch the entire cavern with you in it."

Tails turned to check the progress of Verdante, only to see that he had hardly managed to crack a single brick. "Damn, we don't have enough time!" he thought.

"You have five seconds to come to the mouth of the tunnel and identify yourselves. Five… Four…"

Saito looked at Tails. "What do we do?" he asked.

Tails drew his T-Buster and engaged the plasma cutter, slicing through the stone as fast as he could. "Get ready to shove like your life depends on it!"

"…Three… Two…"

Tails finished the cut and threw his whole weight at the stone wall, with Saito, Verdante, and Malicorne following suit. The wall began to slide inward under the pressure.

"…One!"

Without warning, a giant gust filled the tunnel, pulling backwards on the occupants of the tunnel. Malicorne, being in the back, was the first to go. He tumbled backward with the ferocious wind, being sucked up the tunnel with ease like a giant vacuum cleaner.

"Hold on!" Tails yelled, grabbing Saito by the arm. He kicked off of the wall to tumble with the breeze, dragging Saito with him. The powerful tornado-like magical gust sucked the two clear into the air upon exiting the tunnel, carrying them across the field closer and closer to the central tower of the Academy. Tails engaged his rocket shoes in an attempt to steer himself toward the window, but the tornado seemed to be doing the work for them.

The winds launched them through an open window into what looked like a ballroom, with a staircase on one end of the hall descending from some upper level of the Academy tower. Regaining his balance, Tails brought the two to a gentle landing by a stairwell, dropping to the floor to catch his breath.

"Jeez, that was one insane ride," Saito joked, leaning against the stairwell to regain his balance. "Though, I don't think that was the girls. They said they were gonna burn us, right?"

Tails felt a gentle tap on his shoulder, causing him to spin around. Tabitha stood behind him, still wrapped in nothing but a clean white towel from the underground bath. He quickly broke eye contact out of embarrassment. "Was it you that did that tornado thing?"

Tabitha nodded. Undoing the clasp, Tails took off his knight’s cloak and wrapped the black fabric around Tabitha, fastening it tight around her neck to cover her. "You really should have gotten dressed before saving us. Thanks, though."

Tabitha nodded once more, staring Tails head-on. Saito was watching now, waiting. "So now what?" he asked. Suddenly, the sound of a door opening and many footsteps filled the hall, causing the two boys to panic. The three pressed into the corner made by the central staircase and the wall to minimize their profile as the sounds passed.

Without warning, Tabitha turned Tails around and leaned in for a kiss, catching Tails on the lips. Tails backed off in surprise as his hand rune began to glow, filling him with the burning sensation of the etching process once more. He grit his teeth to keep from crying out from the sudden shock, but thankfully it passed as soon as it came on.

Tabitha nodded and wrapped her arms around Tails. “Familiar,” she whispered.

Tails returned the embrace, hugging her tight. "So all this time, I wasn't your familiar even though I had my rune back… Why didn't you tell me? It was probably freaking you out, right?"

Tabitha didn't respond. Suddenly, Tails felt her entire body go slack. "Ghosts…" she whispered, before falling into unconsciousness. He laid her down gently on the ground before turning around to see what she had faced…

Saito was standing out on the edge of the dance floor, crouching in front of an army of dolls. The dolls moved on their own, dancing in pairs to some inaudible music. Tails walked over and looked down at Saito, seeing him extend a finger to a special doll in a pink dress, unlike the bluish-green dresses and uniforms of the other pairs. Tails watched as Saito used his finger as a hand to dance with the pink princess doll, guiding her through the same dance routine as the other. Feeling a gentle tap on his foot, he looked down to see a waiting doll dressed in blue gazing up at him with a painted, cheery smile.

"Take her hand, Tails," Saito said. "It's rude to keep her waiting, right?"

Tails gently poked a finger out at the doll, letting her take his "hand" to dance. He looked around at the other dolls and emulated their general moves, occasionally looking back to make eye contact with the doll. The doll's frozen smile and black charcoal eyes stared back at him, moving gently with his motions.

"Sorry I'm not too good at this," he muttered under his breath toward the doll. The doll continued to dance, smiling as always.

"So there you two are," a voice called out. The blue doll let go of Tails' hand and gave a polite curtsey, more like a gentle bow with her solid wooden dress. Tails bowed slightly in return before looking up to find Louise standing in the doorway on the far end of the room, dressed in her uniform once more. She strolled over to the far end of the room, stopping inches away from Saito as she stared him down. "Tiffania told me everything. You are cleared of charges."

Saito stared back at her, his arms crossed. "Is that all?"

Louise's face flushed red with anger and embarrassment. "A-and… I'm sorry for not believing you."

Saito dropped his guard and hugged Louise, cradling her head against his shoulder. "Thanks. I'm sorry I got so mad with you. It was wrong and irresponsible of me."

Tails looked back at the dance floor to find the dolls had disappeared as fast as they had appeared. Tabitha was starting to rouse, as if the possessed dolls were keeping her asleep by their very presence. Her rustling caught Louise's attention.

"…Saito? Why is Tabitha here, naked?" Louise asked, her entire body trembling with anger as she pushed herself away from Saito. Saito raised his hands in defense. "Louise, she saved us from being charred to bits! Relax!"

Nothing that Saito said could calm Louise down, however. Scrabbling for her leg holster, she drew her wand and began assaulting Saito with the slender wooden stick, chasing him around the room and hitting him repeatedly.

"Nothing ever changes, does it?" Tails thought to himself, watching the scene unfold. He turned to help Tabitha up to her feet, watching her closely to ensure she didn't fall again. Tabitha nodded in thanks, pushing up her glasses on her face before they fell off.

* * *

 

It wasn't long until Tails was dragged off to Louise's room once more, where he was forced to bear witness to Saito's judgement once more.

"… and will no longer touch any breasts, large or small, unless so instructed by Louise," Saito finished reading.

"Sign it, and no lies this time," Louise instructed, holding Saito at the tip of her new riding crop. "I know you did it, and this time I have proof. You aren't worming your way out of this one."

Saito looked to Tails once more before taking the quill once more, scribbling something in Kanji that Tails couldn't read from his angle. He got up from where he sat and rolled up the parchment, placing it in Louise's outstretched hand.

"Fine. Get to bed, it's late," Louise stated, changing into her night gown for sleep. "And remember, if I see you even LOOKING at any other girl the wrong way, we go back to the magic glasses and whip, alright?"

Saito cringed at the bad memories, nodding slightly. He made his way forward to the bed, but Louise pushed him back. "No way, you dog! You're spending the night on the floor for what you did. Don't think that signature made everything alright," Louise stated, pointing to the haystacks. She snapped her fingers to catch Tails' attention as he tried to slip out of the door. "Don't think you're going anywhere, fox! You let him get away with it. You're spending the night in here, too."

Tails stepped back inside and took a seat on the hay pile with a frown, kicking off his shoes. Saito went around and dimmed the oil lamps before laying down on his hay pile next to Tails. The two sat in silence until they could hear Louise's breath steady out as she slipped into sleep. Tails thought that Saito had already fallen asleep as well, but was proved wrong when Saito tapped him on the arm.

"You didn't write your name on that paper, did you?" Tails whispered, not breaking his gaze from some point on the ceiling. Saito shook his head with a grin. "Of course not! She can’t read Japanese kanji. You really think I'm not going to leave myself some technical way out if I have the chance?"

Tails smirked and gave Saito a fistbump, restraining his laughter. "As much as I hate to say it, I would have done the same thing. That's why I try to avoid this stuff in the first place," he said. "I'm headed to bed. See you in the morning."

"Night," Saito replied, rolling over to lay on his side. With silence filling the room, Tails slipped into sleep, trying to think of something pleasant.


	70. Season 3 Chapter 12

**SEASON 3 CHAPTER 12**

Tails was still deep in sleep well into the morning, until he was finally woken by the sound of yelling. He slowly rubbed his eyes with his thumbs to coerce them open, the loud voices of the heated conversation in the background ringing in his ears. Sitting up from his mound of bedsheets, he found Louise and Saito arguing about something, with Siesta clinging to Saito's arm. Siesta began arguing with Louise, but nothing more than some muted, unintelligible dialogue passed through Tails' mind.

"… so I need him to help set up for the Slepnir Ball tomorrow. Whether or not you are his 'official maid' or whatever, he works for me, and does what I say. Got it?" Louise argued.

Siesta raised a hand to stop Louise from arguing further. "How about this? You give me one day with Saito, today, and I'll do my best to treat him like a real person should. Then he'll pick between you and me. If I win, he doesn't have to listen to you anymore. If you win, I stop bugging him. Deal?"

Louise thought about it for a moment, calculating her odds. "Make it until an hour or two past lunch. I need him for help with the setup, since not everyone has a familiar that can work."

"Deal!" Siesta said, holding out her hand for Louise to shake. As soon as Louise shook hands over the deal, Siesta shot out of the room with Saito in tow, leaving Tails and Louise behind.

The door had barely swung closed behind them before Louise turned to the twin-tailed fox and cleared her throat to get his attention. "Miles, I need you to go spy on those two. Make sure they aren't doing anything… inappropriate. You know what I mean."

Yawning, Tails nodded and crawled to his feet, trudging over to the door. Jamming his feet into his shoes, he stepped out into the hallway and shut the door behind him, making his way down the staircase to the ground floor where he found them standing on the lawn hardly a few feet from the door. He could hear Siesta excitedly relaying her plans for the afternoon to Saito right up until she caught sight of the yellow fox, whose presence promptly silenced her. He could see that she was nervous. “She probably already expects me to be spying on her, if she knows anything about Louise,” he thought.

“Morning,” Tails said, giving them a friendly smile. “Sorry to interrupt. Just headed to Colbert’s workshop.” He could see Siesta’s shoulders drop slightly, and her eyes lit up once more – she had understood the fox’s intentions with his casual greeting. “Good morning, Mr. Miles!” she replied.

“Just Tails is fine, remember?” he said with a sigh. “Anyway, have fun, I’m off.” Turning his back on the lovebird and her prize, he strolled across the lawn and around the circular campus to professor Colbert’s old workshop, leaving his fellow familiar to his fun.

“I assume you aren’t actually going to keep an eye on them, are you?” Ring asked in Tails’ mind.

The fox shook his head. “I’m not a snitch. If Louise can’t handle not having Saito on a leash at all times, then she shouldn’t have agreed to it. I’m not going to let her make me a middleman for her silly problems just because I’m her familiar, not while I have work to do, anyway. If you could keep a tab on Saito and Siesta for me, that’d be fantastic.”

“If I could get a Power Ring to boost my range, I would appreciate it.”

Tails used his wristcomm to draw his T-Buster, disconnecting it from his right hand to carry it under his shoulder. "Just jump to my T-Buster, and you should have access to the Ring being held by the generator.

"Sure… okay, they are currently in Siesta's room in the floor above the kitchen. They're sitting at a table…"

“I don't need a minute-by-minute report,” Tails said, rolling his eyes. “Just keep me updated if something big goes down. I'm going to go check on Tabitha or Tiffania. I guess classes might have started, but I might as well see how well Tiffania’s getting settled into her classes now.”

Turning away from the kitchen, he made his way over to Tabitha's dorm, hiking up the multiple floors of stairs to reach her room. Polite knocking on her door received no response, so, after a moment of thought, he decided to simply enter and say his apologies later. To his surprise, however, the room was empty, the window on the far side of the room wide open and her usual accoutrements missing. A letter was placed on the bed next to Tails' cloak and clasp, fluttering in the gentle breeze that circulated through the room. He picked up the letter and began reading:

_To Miles Prower_

_I am out on a mission on behalf of Gallia. It is very important and, unfortunately, highly secretive, so I had to leave you behind. Please do not feel bad, I will be perfectly fine. If things turn out wrong, I have Sylphid to help me. If I am not back by tomorrow, I hope you have a good time at the Slepnir Ball. I took the pistol you built for me from your workshop, as well as the additional cartridges left on the workbench. One of the magazines is broken – during cleaning, I lost the spring that sits beneath the loading plate. You will find it on the workbench._

_Regards,_

_Tabitha._

_(P.S. Thank you for the book of fairy tales, it is quite intriguing despite its dark conclusions. I will be reading it as I travel.)_

Tails shook his head, a grin on his face. “I think that’s more written words than she’s ever spoken to me in person,” he thought, tossing the letter back on Tabitha's bed as he walked over to shut the window. "At least she isn't in a serious bind if she has Sylphid and the handgun," he added. "Wait a sec, Ring, how did you jump to my T-Buster if she took the handgun this morning?"

"She had me jump out of the handgun into your X Tornado's main guns. I just chilled there until you gave me the opportunity to jump from that to this thing."

Tails nodded. "Whatever, it's no big deal. I'm going to go start a new project in the workshop. How is Saito doing?"

"Uhh… let's just keep this part from Louise, shall we?" Ring replied.

Tails put on his cloak and made his way for the door, stopping to check that everything was in order before leaving. "I thought you were the one that liked to get him in trouble?"

"Yeah, but if you saw what he's going through, it might be more than trouble. Even I'd feel guilty about it for a few minutes."

"So you gonna tell me what it is?" Tails thought as he made his way down the stairs.

"Siesta's giving him the naked apron treatment. And-“

“-and that’s where we stop,” Tails laughed. "That kind of stuff you can keep to yourself." Exiting the dormitory tower, he walked out onto the green, heading over to his workshop. He had just made it underground when Ring interrupted.

"Oh, shit," Ring broadcasted.

"What now?" Tails replied. "Is it serious enough that I need to get involved?

"Yep, definitely. I switched over to Siesta's mind and she's just tried to use a love potion."

Tails pivoted about on the spot, scrambling back up the ladder and out of the upper workshop. "Did it work? Crap, how much time do we have?"

"That's not it. I’m reading her short-term memory to see what she sees. She dropped the potion out of the window and it hit Montmorency on the head. It spilled all over her, she’s inhaled the fumes from it and is under its effects. First person she saw was Louise, so she’s madly in love with her. God, this is awkward to watch Louise get kissed by another girl. If it weren’t for Saito, I’d be inclined to think it’s her first… wait, what the hell? The potion’s effects spread to Louise, too! Shit, this is bad.”

“Okay, so we know who to avoid, and we know it spreads. I need to get to Siesta and get more info from her…” Tails thought as he ran, sprinting for the kitchen. “Do you know anything about that potion?”

“I have absolutely no clue, but it’s clearly spreading like a disease from Montmorency, either from the smell of the potion poured on her hair, or from the kiss, or both. Siesta's panicking. Saito's oblivious still, he hasn't looked out the window yet cuz he’s still sitting at the kitchen table.”

Tails darted through the main hallways of the Academy central tower, using the long connecting open-air hallway to reach the kitchen. Looking around for a set of stairs, he found them behind a door in the back of the room, something he’d never taken the time to explore. He flew up the stairs and yanked the door at the top open, finding Saito and Siesta staring out the window at the commotion going on below.

Saito spun around to face Tails. He looked over at Siesta's still-undressed body, and then back at Tails with a beet-red face. "Tails, this isn't what you think it is…" he began, waving his hands.

Tails dismissed the notion with a shake of his head. "I know, Louise has had me keeping tabs on you using Ring. I won't say a word, so don't freak. Right now, we need to get this love potion crap fixed right away, before we all become zombies."

Siesta spun around to face Tails, shutting the window. "Yes, we do. This was my fault, so we need to fix it. How, though?"

Tails thought for a moment. "Well, Montmorency was the drugs expert, and she was the first to be infected, a patient zero, shall we say," he said, thinking out loud. "We can't take it to Professor Cheveruse or Headmaster Osmond, or we’re all in for some deep trouble. We could try to wait it out and see how long it takes for them to go back to normal. Ring said Montmorency only sniffed the vapors of it instead of drinking it, so the dosage should be less. Hopefully, that means the effect will wear off."

Saito nodded and pointed at Tails' T-Buster. "What about stunning them into unconsciousness? The potion's a mental thing, so shouldn't we be able to simply knock them all out until the potion wears off?"

Tails gave Saito a thumbs-up. "Good idea! Leave it to me, since I can do it from a range. Don't go whacking people if you don't have to, since it might spread to you. If they do, don't swallow anything, and rinse out your mouth as soon as possible." He bolted for the window, yanking the window up to poke his head out. Louise and Montmorency were nowhere to be found, despite their presence only moments ago. "Shit, they're gone. Ring, try and find them!" Tails thought.

“On it. They’re running across the campus like a couple of madmen,” Ring replied. “Better hurry before they find someone new to infect.”

Tails hopped out of the window, landing gently with a quick spin of his tails to soften the landing. Affixing his T-Buster to his right hand once more, he took off running around the campus.

Sprinting around the circular lawns of the campus to check the dormitory towers, Tails darted into the first dorm tower. There, he found a group of four girls ganging up on Beatrice, clearly infected with the potion. Taking aim, Tails built up a charge in his arm cannon and opened fire on the girls, knocking them clean out with quick, low-voltage taser charges. It was already too late, though, and the scent of the potion had taken over Beatrice as well. He quickly stunned her into unconsciousness, being sure to hold his nose just in case.

"Crap, still no sign of Louise or Montmorency. Who knows how many they've gotten to by now," he thought. He spared one final look at the pile of unconscious women, but decided not to move them. He took off across the campus once more, knocking out any infected students as he went.

* * *

 

Tails jogged to a stop, catching his breath. “Jeez, how many more?” he asked, leaning up against the front door of the Academy central tower.

“Last few are up in the classrooms, I think. We’ve checked everyone else except those,” Ring replied.

“but that means I have to climb stairs!” the fox groaned, forcing himself to get up and step inside. He ran through the halls to the nearest set of stairs, climbing up to the third floor of the tower to the first floor of classrooms where the main lecture hall was located. Gently opening the door to peek inside, he could see Louise, Montmorency, Mrs. Cheveruse, and a few other students circling closely around Tiffania in the far corner of the room.

"Tiffania!" Tails called, catching her attention as she ran over. Tiffania was holding a short brown wand high in the air, charging a spell with a blinding flash of light. A burst of light filled the room, leaving Tails blinded for the briefest moment. As he regained his vision, he stopped running, looking around curiously.

"Why was I here again?" Tails thought to himself, looking down at his T-Buster, then back up at the girls. The group that had been circling around Tiffania were all rubbing their heads, as if they shared some serious headache.

"Ugh, what a nightmare," Louise muttered. "I had some weird daydream about kissing a bunch of people. Eugh… I feel like I did it, too," she complained, rubbing her sleeve across her mouth.

Montmorency looked at her weirdly. "No way! I had the same dream. That can't be right… it’s disgusting to even think about it,” she added, shuddering at the thought.

Tails shrugged and returned to his workshop, unable to comprehend why he was upstairs. "Ring, do you remember anything about it? I just remember some flash of light, and bam, I felt like I was having déjà vu of epic proportions."

"It's a memory-wiping spell," Ring replied. "It's probably a nature-magic type spell, something that Elves are known for. It'd make sense that Tiffania could use it, if she's half elf."

Tails shrugged. "Whatever. Fill me in on it later… I think I remember Louise saying something about an event, so I should probably talk to Headmaster Osmond about that...”

* * *

 

For the rest of the afternoon and evening, Tails found himself working in the ballroom on the first floor of the central tower, where Tabitha had saved him and Saito the night before, using his flying abilities to hang decorations from the ballroom's high ceiling. Below, many girls were setting the hors d'ouveres tables with large decorative cloths that spread from end to end, bordered with intricate and delicate lace. "Jeez, those must have costed a fortune," Tails thought to himself, looking over the length of the tables from high above. He dropped slowly to the floor after hanging the last decoration, the gust of his tails fluttering the tablecloths nearby. He plucked his cloak off of the back of the chair he had left it on and stepped back to admire his work.

"Great work, Miles!" Tails could hear Headmaster Osmond say over his shoulder. "It's been a long time since we've had the ceiling decorations in use, due to the difficulty of properly hanging them with levitation magic."

Tails smiled and nodded. "I can imagine. They do look nice, though!"

Headmaster Osmond nodded. "Yes, they do look nice. Thank you for your help. If you stay out of trouble, I can permit you to be excused from mowing the grass with the other boys."

Tails bowed in appreciation. "Thank you. I'll be grabbing some dinner and then heading to bed, so it shouldn't cause any problems." He turned to head for the door, but Headmaster Osmond called for him one more time, motioning him to come over. Bending down, the old man cupped his mouth with one hand to prevent his words from travelling far. "How was the view of the baths? Any good?" he whispered.

Tails laughed and shook his head. "I don't think I should be telling you, or you might be out there mowing the lawn with your students!" He turned and headed for the door, making sure not to make eye contact with any of the jealous boys watching him. As a communal punishment for the “crimes” committed by Guiche and the others that were there that night, the girl students were holding the boys at wand-point, forcing them to pick blades of grass by hand. It hadn’t helped their case that rumors of the “supposed” love potion had begun to spread, and the boys had been the natural candidate for which to blame.

"I should probably build them some sort of manual push-mower or something to make the job go faster," Tails thought as he jogged to the kitchen. "Ah, what the heck. The girls would probably keep them from using it even if I did."

Tails stepped into the kitchen, forcing his way into a fervent crowd of chefs that were busy preparing various snacks and meals for the party in advance. The smell of meats and marinades permeated the air as he worked his way through the storm of workers moving in every which way. He found Siesta in her normal uniform taking a dinner break over on the cutting table, working her way through a bowl of shepherd's pie.

"Hey, Siesta! Where could I grab something for dinner?" Tails asked, catching her attention. Siesta got up from her chair and bowed to Tails before addressing him. "Would you like a plate of pie or a bowl of stew? We have both available to us for dinner tonight."

"Shepherd's pie, please," he stated. "And, uh, knock off the formalities. It feels weird."

Siesta looked a bit confused. "But you're a knight now. It's what we're supposed to do."

Tails shook his head. "Yeah, well, please don't. We're friends, alright? Being a knight doesn't change a thing. Heck, I’m still not even sure it means anything to me, to be honest…"

Siesta smiled and walked off to fetch some food. Moments later, she returned with a steaming plate of pie, a glass of water, and some silverware. As Tails dug into the meaty concoction smothered with potatoes, she took a seat next to him, looking down at the table in embarrassment. "Miles… uh… Thanks for not telling Louise anything, even though she told you to," Siesta said, her face turning red with embarrassment at the memory.

Tails took a swig of water to cool his mouth down and cleared his throat. "It's no big deal. I'd expect the same of you and Saito if I ever got into trouble, so I don't see anything wrong with it."

Siesta nodded as he continued to eat at a slower pace. "Saito still hasn't picked between me and Louise, so I think I'll try again tomorrow. The best part is, now that the Queen has made me his personal maid, I am allowed to be around him at any time, no matter what miss Louise says."

Tails just about choked on his food, tapping his chest with a balled fist to alleviate the coughing. "It's all well and good that you want to spend time around him, but do you realize how much trouble that gets Saito into with Louise? His life would be a living hell if you were always stirring up trouble with her."

Siesta looked down at the table, crestfallen at the thought. "Oh. I hadn't realized I was being that much of a nuisance…"

Tails snapped his fingers. "Hey, stay with me here. All you have to do is make one final, decisive blow. Stop dragging it out with small things, and get him to fully realize. I don't think he quite got the memo yesterday thanks to everything that went down. Try asking him to the dance tomorrow."

A smile crept across Siesta's face. "Yeah… yeah! That would work. If I pull it off, I shouldn't get into any trouble."

Tails looked confused. "Trouble? What am I missing here?"

Siesta looked at him oddly. "The dance is mostly for nobles only, but you and Saito are the exception, since you are knights. However, if I could think of a good disguise, the Mirror would help me stay secret…"

Tails waved his hand in a circular motion. "Ok, back up and start from the beginning. What's special about this ball? I think I'm missing something here."

"The Slepnir Ball is a special event, hosted once a year!” Siesta said, her eyes alight at the thought. “There's a special magic mirror that is used to give you a perfect disguise for one night. You get to become anyone you want to be. If I can get to the mirror and get a disguise for the night, I can slip in incognito and find Saito. No one would ever know it's me!"

Nodding, Tails finished off his pie. "It sounds risky, but you could probably do it if you are one of the server staff on the inside. I don't know how this mirror thing works, but I'm sure you'll figure it out. I'm going to head to bed, we've got a big day tomorrow."

Picking up his dirty dishes, Tails hopped up from his chair and took his plate to the washbin, much to Siesta's protest, washing the dishes himself. Leaving the clean dishes on a drying rack, he weaved his way through the crowd of chefs to the door, stepping outside into the late evening light. The boys and girls out mowing the grass were inside for a dinner break, allowing Tails to take his time to head back to the workshop without scrutiny from the other boys. When he was done with his short evening stroll, he dropped down into his workshop and sprawled out on his hammock, rocking himself to an early sleep.


	71. Season 3 Chapter 13

**SEASON 3 CHAPTER 13**

Tails heard a gentle knocking on the workshop door above, rousing him from his sleep. He slowly climbed up the ladder to head for the door. He could see through the window a gleaming metal helmet, filling Tails with a sense of sleep-dulled eagerness. He yanked open the door to greet the man, shaking his hand.

"Morning, Miles!" George stated, thrusting a brown paper-wrapped package into Tails' hands. "It's as good as new, special slot and everything. That cut in the tip of the blade was a pain in the ass to iron out, but I think it'll work." Tails welcomed George into the workshop, laying the package on the table among the pile of presents left over from the Knights' gifts. "Looks like someone had a good birthday party!" the iron-clad knight joked.

Tails shook his head. "They aren't mine, none of them. Besides, they're probably all ugly sweaters, knowing my luck with presents."

George let out another deep chuckle. "So, is this where you do all your work?" he asked, looking around the room. "Kinda cozy for doing heavy smithing, don't you think?"

"No, I do all my work down there,” Tails said, pointing to the open trapdoor. “What brings you here today?"

George removed his heavy metal gauntlets and rubbed his eyes. "To tell you the truth, not much. They sent me out here because of some rumors of a massive dragon patrolling the area, although that's the only reason I'm staying behind for any amount of time. I really came to return the sword and bring you some news about your dragon-machine thing."

Tails' ears perked up at the sound of 'dragon'. "What about them? Both the big dragon and the Zero, I mean."

George cleared his throat. "Well, we found your dragon, or whatever it is, but it was pretty heavily charred up. Some Albian mages found it after fleeing into the hills from Gotha and decided to torch it since they couldn't haul it back with them. We're not sure if it's repairable at this point, but we figured we'd send it your way just to be sure. It should arrive some time in the next few days. As for the big dragon, there isn't much. It's reported to be several hundred yards long and wide, and extremely fast. No reported attacks, just a bunch of sightings."

Tails let out a sigh and drew his sword from the paper wrapping, lofting it high. "Well, it's a shame about the Zero, but I'm sure with enough time it could be made airworthy again. As for the sword, you did a great job! Thanks a lot."

"You're embarrassing me, Miles," George said, taking off his helmet to run his hand through his hair. "Anyways, I'm off to speak with the princess in the tallest tower, old Osmond. I'll see you later."

Tails showed George out before shutting the door behind him and stepping back down the ladder into his workshop. "Ring, are you in the sword yet or not?"

The metal talking piece on the sword began to jump up and down in speech. "Yeah, I'm here. Good to be back."

Tails brought up his T-Buster and pulled out a Power Ring from the storage slot, snapping it into the slot in the blade. "Looks like George was right on the money in fixing the Power Ring slot. Feels good to have one back?"

"You betcha," Ring replied. "Hey, you want to go practice some sparring? You're probably long overdue for some exercise."

Tails laughed. "I don't know what you call exercise, but flying really drains my energy. Yeah, I'll go fetch Saito to do some sparring. Let's see if you still remember how to do those shield manipulation tricks I showed you."

* * *

 

Tails was breathing heavily as he backed off to readjust his grip on Ring. Saito was winded as well, but not enough to keep himself from pressing the offense frequently. Saito lunged forward, Derflinger raised diagonally. Tails dodged to the right, sticking the end of Ring's blade deep into the dirt to bring him to a stop.

Bending down to get a good grip on the ground, he leaped after Saito with his sword at the ready. He managed to slam Ring's pommel into Saito's lower spine, knocking the boy off of his feet. Scrambling to his feet, Saito rolled to the side to dodge a lunging blow and swung at Tails' feet with his own blade, nearly catching the fox’s ankles if he hadn’t taken to the air with his tails in the nick of time. Saito got to his feet and brought Derflinger to the ready, but decided to hold off on pressing the attack to catch his breath.

This time, Tails pushed the offensive. He worked his way closer to Saito, lashing out with small thrusts that forced Saito to either dodge or parry and disengage, slowing his recovery. Saito finally managed to recover long enough to prepare a top-down swipe of his own, but Tails was ready.

"Do it, Ring!" he thought. Suddenly, a blue shield appeared in front of Saito's sword, stopping his swing short and leaving him unexpectedly vulnerable. Tails followed up with a punch to the gut, knocking Derflinger aside as Saito let go from the sudden blow.

"Owowow," Saito muttered, holding his stomach. "Alright, you win. Dang, you've always got new tricks up your sleeve, don't you?"

Tails sheathed Ring and helped Saito to his feet. "To be fair, I could have won from the start. Ring could have created a knife-shaped shield and stabbed you before the fight started. That being said, you did really good. Almost turned my feet to calcium dust with that low swipe."

Saito retrieved Derflinger and sheathed him. "I wonder if there's any way to properly counter your shield? I know it can be run out of energy and all, but…"

Tails shrugged. "Perhaps. Who knows, maybe it's some part of your Gandalfr abilities you haven't found yet? If you look hard, you can find more than one use for your powers, I'd bet."

Saito looked back at the castle, his stomach grumbling. "Do you think they're serving food yet? There was an announcement saying lunch would be later due to preparations, but you'd think they would have SOMETHING by now, right?"

"They said the assembly for doing costumes for the party would begin when the sun was halfway down, since it takes so long. I'd imagine that would be pretty soon,” Tails said, glancing up at the sun, shielding his eyes with his hand. “We can go in and see if there's something in the kitchen, I guess?"

"Heck yeah, I'm starving!" Saito replied. He took off for the main gate of the perimeter wall, leaving Tails to catch up.

They found the kitchen as bustling as ever, with the scents of the marinading meats from yesterday evening finally being cooked, smoked, and grilled over various magic and wood-fired grills. Saito snatched a few sandwiches from a platter, taking as many as he dared being caught with. He handed a few to Tails and stepped back outside to eat them, shutting the door behind Tails. Tails took off his sword and hung it on a coat rack just inside the door before joining Saito under the tree by the kitchen door.

The two boys had just managed to scarf down their sandwiches when Louise came calling, looking for Saito. "Hey, you idiots, get over here!" she yelled. "The announcement assembly before we start using the Mirror is about to begin. Get inside!"

Tails and Saito sprinted over to catch up with Louise as she headed back into the dining hall. Every student had taken a seat at one of the tables, but no food was spread out in front of them. The three took a seat on the back end of a table as Headmaster Osmond cleared his throat to get people's attention.

"Good afternoon, students!" he began. "As you all well know, today is the day we celebrate. The Slepnir Ball, as you know, is a celebration of individuality; we express ourselves through those we love without exposing ourselves, and in turn come to learn more of one another. The Mirror, as you know, will allow you to become whoever you choose for as long as the spell is maintained, which we shall do for this evening. You are free to become whoever you choose, but a word of caution. Should anyone be found engaging in inappropriate activity, your disguise will be lifted and you will be punished according to the action. However, I ask that you do not focus on this, as it is very rare. Please, enjoy yourselves this evening. Please form a single-file line at the door to my right, where you will find the Mirror. When your transformation is complete, you will continue through the hallway following the markings to the main hall. Once everyone has met in the main dance hall, you will have free roam over the campus. Myself and Mrs. Cheveruse will be disguised as well, so do please look for us. That is all."

Every student stood up and began forming a long line that snaked through the room between the tables in order to fit in the room – some one hundred and fifty students in all, Tails guessed. “I’m surprised how many people there are here that I haven’t gotten to know yet,” he thought. As he stood to get in line, Louise placed a hand on his shoulder. "Because I had to come look for you idiots, I had to give up my spot at the front of the line,” she said with a scowl, “so just stay seated until the line dies down. It takes nearly a minute and a half for the mirror to recharge between uses, so we’ll be here for a while.”

Tails nodded and took a seat, watching patiently as students entered through a door to the side of the podium, obscured by a curtain hanging from the doorframe. Three excruciating hours passed; no matter how much either Tails or Saito complained, Louise forced them to stay, as punishment for making her give up her place to fetch them. Finally, as the last few students lined up in front of the curtain Louise stood up and walked over to the line, followed by Tails and Saito as they snapped out of their daydreaming.

Louise turned to Saito. "Remember to come and find me on the other side. I don't want Siesta winning this stupid challenge of hers just because you're too dumb to find me, ok?"

Saito nodded nervously, messing with the collar of his hoodie. "Shouldn't be hard, right?"

Headmaster Osmond got behind the three in line and coughed, catching their attention. "Please move up. The faster we can complete this, the longer we can enjoy ourselves in the party."

Louise gave Saito a final stinkeye and stepped into the curtain. A minute passed before a subtle flash of light flared out of the crack between the curtains. "Next!" Tails could hear Mrs. Cheveruse call.

"Wish me luck!" Saito said, stepping into the curtain. Tails paused awkwardly, wondering what Saito would need luck for. He turned to face Headmaster Osmond inquisitively.

"So what do I need to do to get a costume?" Tails asked.

"Well, as I understand it, it's already part of who you are," Osmond explained. "The Mirror reads your heart and mind and finds the best match from your knowledge and your past. Most students can influence the Mirror’s decision by thinking of who they want to be, and that's who they will become, but the indecisive ones will often become someone they know very well."

Tails began racking his mind. "Who would I want to be?" However, he didn't have much time to think before he was called in. He stepped into a dark room, facing a dimly-lit full-sized mirror on an ornate frame.

Mrs. Cheveruse's voice called from the opposite side of the mirror. "Please think of someone you want to become. I will activate the spell in five seconds. Five… Four… Three…"

Tails panicked. "Crap, I have no clue! What the heck, I'll just do Sonic…"

"…Two… One…"

A flash of light filled the room, filling Tails' mind and driving out every thought as he closed his eyes to keep from being blinded...

_Bootup… Powerup complete. Systems check… Systems check complete. All systems green._

Tails kept his eyes shut, feeling an intense headache. "Dang, I feel awful. Maybe this is what Sonic feels like after a run," he thought to himself. He placed his hand on his head and heard a soft metal-on-metal clang.

"Wait a sec. That can't be right…"

_Engage standard vision. No magnification. Defogging… defogging complete. Backlight illumination initiated._

Tails rubbed his eyes and took a long look into the mirror. A pair of bright blue, elliptical eyes glowed back at him, illuminating a yellow, metallic body in a soft light reflected from the mirror.

"Holy shit, I've been roboticized!" Tails thought. "Wait a sec… No, this is Emerl! Holy crap, I'm Emerl! Oh crap, people are going to flip out when they see me."

"If your transformation is complete, please proceed out to the dance hall so that others may change," Mrs. Cheveruse's voice called around the mirror. Tails walked over to the side hall, his metal feet clacking away on the stone tile. He made his way through the halls, headed toward the ballroom. He climbed a set of stairs to reach the upper floor of the ballroom, poking his head into the doorway.

_Vision magnification, 2-4x variable zoom engaged. Facial Recognition scanner activated._

Tails looked out into the crowd as he scanned for familiar faces, his vision magnifying whenever he focused on an individual person. "Wow, so this is what it's like to be a robot! This is so freakin' cool!"

_Subject Analysis: Saito Hiraga. Male, 17, Human. There seem to be multiple copies of Saito in the room – one seems out of place with unnatural upper chest shape for a male. Possibly a fake? End documentation._

Tails spied Saito across the room, looking rather hopeless among a crowd of unfamiliar faces and colorful outfits. Nervous, he stepped inside the hallway and made his way down the stairs to the dance floor. Many of the mysterious people gave him odd looks, but not a single one fazed him in the slightest. He walked over and tapped Saito on the shoulder, causing him to spin around. Something was off, however… Saito’s chest was completely misshapen, like that of a woman’s. The person stumbled backwards out of fright from seeing Tails' mechanical body, causing him to raise his hands in an attempt to show innocence.

_Voice Module engaged. Accessing vocabulary databanks… access complete. Connection live._

"Whoa, whoa, Tiffania! It's me, Tails!" Tails said in a tinny, robotic version of his voice. "I know, I didn't expect to be turned into a robot either. It was random, I think."

"Oh," the Saito-like person said in a feminine voice. "How did you know who I was?"

Tails pointed at her chest. "It's sort of obvious when you dress as a guy but still have those," he said.

Tiffania tugged gently on the blue jacket she wore. "I couldn't help that they wouldn't go away… I don't know why they didn't…"

Tails dismissed it with a wave. "Maybe it has to do with your elf heritage. Maybe the Mirror doesn't work on elves, so it only partially worked for you? Who knows? Anyways, I'm going to go try to find Saito. Have fun!"

A loud bell rung from the upstairs section that Tails had entered the room at, drawing everyone's attention. Mrs. Cheveruse stood at the top of the stairs, holding a large choir bell. "Everyone, I wanted to inform you that everyone is now fully costumed excluding myself. The party has officially begun. Music will begin shortly, and hors d'ouvres will be brought out momentarily. Please enjoy yourself, and good luck finding your friends!"

_Subject Analysis: Tiffania Westwood, 16-17, Female, Half-elf Half-human. Aside from the true Tiffania Westwood partially disguised as Saito Hiraga, there seem to be three known Tiffania impersonators and possibly more. End documentation._

Tails noted that there were many people disguised as Tiffania, mostly huddled together in some sort of “Tiffania fan club” in the corner of the ballroom. He made his way over to the decorated table where many kinds of food were being laid out. He eagerly grabbed for a plate, but stopped himself. "Shit, Emerl doesn't have a mouth," he thought. He stepped away from the table and stepped back into the crowd. "What a waste. It all looks so good, too!"

The crowd parted wherever Tails went, receiving suspicious looks from those around him. "Am I really that scary?" Tails thought.

_Wireless transmission incoming. Connection established. Source distance, 79.64 meters and changing._

"Well, duh. You're made of metal and have glowing eyes. Things don't get any weirder than that, bro," Ring transmitted into Tails' mind. "You left me in the kitchen, so I've jumped to your body. This thing's pretty strong as a weapon! Is it some of your tech from back home?"

Tails sighed as he climbed the staircase. "No, it's an old friend of mine that we lost a long time ago. He was a sentient robot called Emerl that we tried to teach to be a normal person, but it conflicted with his programming as a superweapon. He self-destructed as a result, saving me and my friends in the process."

"Dark choice for a costume, but hey, you must've really liked him if you picked him," Ring replied.

"Yeah, he was like a second brother to me… It wasn't a first choice for a costume, though. I guess I just didn't make my primary choice clear or fast enough, perhaps."

"Well, then he's all the more important to you if it was your natural pick."

Tails turned around and scanned the crowd again, using his magnifying vision to pick up on certain faces in hopes of finding someone familiar. On the other end of the hall, several musicians took their seats in a cordoned-off section of the hall, setting up their sheet music and stands. A piano was rolled out onto the stage, followed by musicians carrying a variety of string and woodwind instruments.

_Subject Analysis: Guiche de Grammont, Male, 17-18, Human. Unknown whether this Guiche is real or an impersonation. Memory databanks indicate very few people like Guiche, due to the recent turn of events. Impersonation relatively unlikely. Currently talking to a breast-less Saito. Cloak indicates this could be the real Saito. End documentation._

The hall erupted into dance and movement as the musicians picked up a lively dance tune. Men and women, as the costumes would have it appear, paired up to dance. Tails' magnified vision zoomed in on Guiche as he snacked away on a plate full of appetizers, watching the dancers move. Tails' vision shifted when he saw Saito come into the edge of his magnified view, surprising him. He stepped down the stairs, the clank of his metal feet obscured by the music. Thankfully, Saito and Guiche hadn't moved by the time Tails was able to weave his way between the pairs of dancers over to where he last saw them.

"Ok, is this Guiche or Montmorency I'm now speaking with?" Tails asked to the blond-haired boy. The boy smirked slightly, confirming Tails' suspicions.

"Why, Tails, I'm glad that you believe my Montmorency thinks so highly of me! However, it is indeed me this fine evening," Guiche replied with a wave of his rose wand. "And this is also indeed Saito, to my right. Who might you be? Someone from your home world?"

Tails nodded, his eyes glowing bright. "Long story short, yes," he replied. "Have you had any luck finding your dance partner?"

Guiche messed with his hair a little, slightly ashamed. "No, unfortunately I haven't. Perhaps it is a sign that I do not know my Montmorency as well as I should?"

Saito shrugged. "I'm pretty much in the same boat. I didn’t pick a costume, since I thought it would make finding Louise harder than it needs to be. Are you even going to try to dance with anyone, Tails?"

Tails shook his metallic head, his neck joint clicking softly. "No, I don't think I'll be able to get within three feet of anyone with a costume like this. Everyone's too scared of me."

Saito scanned the crowd, looking for someone. "Well, I'm sure you'll find someone. Just hold out for it, alright? I'm going to go find Louise before she gets mad at me."

Saito took off across the dance floor, head looking every which way as he disappeared into the crowd. Tails stared awkwardly as he stood silently, focusing on the combined sound of the music and the low, muted thrum of his power core.


	72. Season 3 Chapter 14

Tails walked over to the edge of the cordoned-off area for the musicians and watched intensely, scanning every motion of the musician's movements.

_Analysis: Memory databanks indicate the large instrument in the rear is a "piano". Sound is generated by striking the variety of mechanical buttons at the front that transfer kinetic energy from the strike to a hammer mechanism that in turn strikes a tensioned metal wire, generating sound. Accessing databanks for "piano" music…_

A series of vivid memories flashed through Tails' mind of life with Chris back in Central Square, memories of watching videos and live performances a blur so fast that he couldn't stop to focus on any one. Memories of observed techniques embedded themselves in his brain, giving him an instinctive feel for the piano -- a sense of nostalgia or déjà vu, as if he had played one before. Tails' head ached from all of the data scanned and processed simultaneously in his mind, forcing him to rest his head in his hands to try and take the stress away. A warning message popped up in a HUD overlayed on his vision indicating high operating temperature, but it quickly flashed away as soon as it arrived.

One of the musicians, an older gentleman holding an ornate stringed instrument like an over-sized violin, leaned forward in his chair to catch Tails' attention as the current piece drew to a close. "Are you alright, sir? Is the music bothering you?"

Tails' head snapped up at the response. "No, no, I'm fine," he replied with a shake of his head. "Actually… Could I try something? I would like to play a piece on the piano, if you don't mind. A solo from a different world I visited on my travels."

The old man looked back at his companions, receiving a few nods, shrugs, and indifferent hand gestures in return. "They seem okay with it. I don't see why not?"

Tails circled around the back edge of the stage to get around the velvet cordon that separated the stage from the floor. The gentleman seated at the piano bench took a seat on an empty chair in the back of the ensemble as Tails took a seat.

"Whenever you're ready, m'boy" the piano player said, giving Tails a smile.

_Searching databanks… Skill recall: piano. Skill recall: voice… Scanning file. Scan complete, Extraction/Manipulation initiated… Extraction/Manipulation complete. Modulation complete. Replay initiated…_

“I hope this works like I think it does, or I’m about to look like a total idiot…” Tails thought. He took a deep breath as a singular memory filled his vision, guiding him through the mechanical motions like reading a movie script. With an innate sequence of hand motions driven from some internal file in his newly-mechanized mind, Tails opened up the piece with a slow, jazzy riff that captured the audience's attention. Nervous, he faked a throat-clearing cough, and with a voice replicated from the video file he'd watched back on Chris' world, opened up with Franklin Sinna's  _Fly Me to the Moon._

Suddenly, his vision changed, as if he had suddenly taken a back-seat in his own body; as if Emerl, or at least some software embedded deep in his newly mechanized body, were really in control of his hands and feet. "I've never even played piano before, much less sung, but here I am!" Tails thought to himself excitedly, watching the display of graceful finger motions unfold before his eyes. "So this must be Emerl's copy ability. His programming read some memory of mine and copied the ability to play piano! This voice sounds so familiar…"

The replication of the singer’s voice from his memories filled the hall with a warm and resonating tone, complete with lifelike quavers on the highest notes. His camera lenses switched to a wide field-of-view as he looked out of the corner of his eyes, noting people's astonished faces. "Too bad they'll be holding me accountable to this for ages, but I'll probably never be able to do it again after tonight."

_Fill my heart with song, and let me sing, foooorever more!_

_You are all I long for, all I worship, and adooore!_

_In other wooords, please be truuuuuue!_

_In other words; I love you!_

Tails' hands broke into a bridge devised of complex sevenths, thirteenths and syncopated jazzy baselines that formed the piano solo. Tails tried to follow everything from behind the eyes of his motionless head, watching his silvery-grey hands roll up and down the keyboard, in blocks of chords that he didn't even understand. The room filled with a rich, lively sound despite the echo-ey stone walls of the hall, the piano roaring and resounding across the hall. Some of the students started to improvise some basic dances to this foreign rhythm, smiling as they simply messed around with their fellow students, just having a good time.

After a final round of the chorus and the signature belt-it-out high note, Tails rolled the song to a close with a series of sweet, slightly dissonant chords. Applause erupted from the crowd with whistles and encore calls. Regaining control of his body, Tails stood up from the bench and bowed awkwardly, his blue eyes glowing brightly with joy.

The pianist stood up from his chair in the back and walked over to Tails, patting him on the shoulder. "M'boy, that was a fine performance. I've never heard of such a fine music! I watched your performance closely and learned quite a bit. If you don't mind, I may try it for myself some day."

Tails laughed a little, reverting to a higher-quality version of his own voice. "Yeah! To be honest, that was a first for me, as well. I think I'm going to find a few of my friends. Good luck with your playing!"

Tails circled around the cordon and stepped down off of the stage. A crowd of students mobbed him, wanting to shake his hand and congratulate him for his performance. Guiche stepped forward and grabbed Tails' hand, shaking it vigorously.

"Miles, that was brilliant! I've never heard of such a song, but it moved me deeply. Thank you for your performance!" he declared with flair, drawing attention to himself. Tails simply stared back with his deadpan robotic face, watching Guiche's movements. "You're welcome. I'm glad you enjoyed the song," he replied.

Suddenly, out of the edge of his vision, he could see several people being pushed out of the way as the crowd parted for someone headed toward the far end of the ballroom. He caught sight of a pink-haired lady storming up the stairs at the far end of the room, with Saito chasing after her. "Pink hair… Cattleya? That's probably Louise, but why is she running away?" he thought to himself.

He began pushing through the crowd to the stairs to give chase. His metal feet skidding on the stone floors of the Academy, he barely managed to keep Saito in sight as the two sprinted through the hallways, blasting past free-roaming students in their path. He chased the blue-clad boy out to the perimeter wall's main gate, where he saw Saito come to a stop. The sun had dipped below the distant forest's edge, casting a twilight shadow across the field below the orange and purple sky.

_Heat-vision engage. Scanning… Several confirmed targets hiding in the trees at the forest's edge. Flying target, stationary, 25.71 meters at 39.2 degrees of elevation. Louise Françoise Le Blanc de La Vallière is on board flying heat signature with an unknown assailant. Louise's heartbeat is slowed to extreme lows, similar to mild cryostasis, however her heat signature does not reflect this. Potential involvement of narcotics. Hostage situation, most certainly._

Tails' vision flickered for a moment, switching from standard color mode to a long-range, multi-colored infrared thermal camera, revealing small dots of red representing heat signatures peering around the edges of trees far across the field. Tails blinked once more, returning to normal vision as he focused on one particular target floating in air. His vision zoomed in on the target, taking a brief moment to regain focus.

"Shit, it's that creepy purple lady that attacked us on the way to the castle earlier," Ring stated. "Hey, Tabitha's here! She must have tailed the bitch home after seeing her head thi- MOVEMOVEMOVE!"

Motion sensors alerted Tails of an incoming object from his right, sending him into a forward roll out of mechanical instinct. An icicle the size of a basketball flew right through where he stood moments ago, shattering in the grass a ways away. Saito and Tails both turned to face Tabitha, her wand outstretched to engage them.

"Tabitha, knock it off and help us! This lady has Louise!" Saito called, looking back and forth between his two targets.

Tails held up a hand to silence Saito. "You focus on getting Louise back. I'll worry about Tabitha."

Saito nodded and turned to the flying lady while Tails began to approach Tabitha, his hands in the air. "Come on, Tabitha, it's me. Tails. Why are you attacking us?"

Tabitha didn't respond, instead summoning two more icicles. With a brief flick of her wand, one of the razor-sharp shards hurtled toward him, clearly with intent to kill.

_Searching databanks… Skill recall: Chaos Powers… Scanning file. Scan complete, Extraction/Manipulation initiated… Extraction/Manipulation complete. Modulation complete. Chaos Energy reserves activated. Replay initiated…_

Tails raised his hand to his chest. "Chaos… Control!"

Suddenly, time slowed to a standstill; the icicle slowed to a running pace, allowing Tails to catch it like an oversized football. The mechanical side of his body took over as he wound up his arm to lob the icicle like a baseball, terminating the time-distortion of his Chaos Control as the icicle left his hand. As time returned to its normal speed, the razor-sharp block of ice accelerated to near-supersonic velocity, impacting the second, motionless icicle with absolute precision. The two icicles exploded into a shotgun-blast of razor-sharp particles over Tabitha's shoulder, evaporating almost instantly from the heat of the impact. It took a moment for Tabitha to recognize what had just happened before her eyes went wide; scrambling for her handgun, she aimed and took a shot at Tails. The round caught him in the shoulder before he could recover from the momentum of his Chaos-Control-assisted throw, penetrating his shoulder.

_Analysis initaited… Left shoulder joint critically damaged. Initiating VS Nanite repair systems. Due to partial depletion of Chaos Energy reserves, repair rate will be reduced. Analysis indicates the weapon used was a chemically-accelerated, aerodynamically optimized pellet of metal, launched via expanding gasses from a specially-drilled tube, known as a "gun". System replication initiated… System replicated complete._

Tails recoiled under the blow to his shoulder, taking a moment to inspect the damage. One of the three glowing dots on his chest was extinguished. “Must be how much Chaos power Emerl’s body stores,” he thought.

Acting on his own, Ring brought up a shield to encompass Tails' body, deflecting the rounds into the stone-brick perimeter wall as Tabitha fired three more times. As Tails' mechanized body recovered from the damage, his right hand, under a mind of its own, began to change shape. In a flurry of moving parts, two large-bore barrels emerged from his bulky metal arms, mounted over the back of his right hand. "Copy ability, all right!" Tails thought. "Never gonna get tired of that."

Ring dropped the shield to allow Tails to return fire. A ballistics HUD overlaid Tails' vision, the software of his mechanical mind taking control of his body once more. A single crack split the air as Tails fired, the massive round smashing into Tabitha’ handgun as she lowered the device. The metal device flew from her hand, landing in the grass several feet away in several pieces. Before Tabitha could retaliate with her magic, Tails quickly closed the gap between them, tackling her to the ground with his heavy metal body. He pinned her arms to the ground with uncanny mechanical strength, illuminating her face with his glowing blue eyes.

A single tear rolled down Tabitha's face. "I'm sorry..." she mumbled. Still clutching her staff, the long wooden rod suddenly flashed with blue light, blinding Tails' standard color vision. By the time his camera-like mechanical eyes finally readjusted, she was gone, leaving no trace behind.

"Damn it!" Tails said aloud, slamming the ground with his fist. He stood up and looked over to see Louise standing beside Saito, staring up at the purple lady with sword and wand drawn.

"Hey, purple lady! What's up with Tabitha? Where are you keeping her?!" Tails called, staring at the lady on high. Unbeknownst to him, his eyes flickered red as his rage began to build.

The lady scoffed at him. "As if I need to provide answers to a little rat. If you’re even slightly intelligent, you can figure it out for yourself if you're so inclined."

Tails raised his right hand, proudly displaying his metallic middle finger. "Yeah, well, you can send this back to whoever you work for and tell him to stick it in his pipe and smoke it, 'cuz I'm coming to get her back!”

The lady laughed a little. "I'm no messenger of yours. Write him your little tear-soaked letter yourself, runt. My work is done." With that, the lady turned her manta ray around and took off for the woods.

"A fine point!" Tails yelled after her, walking over to the perimeter wall. "My rebuttal?! You…"

With a grip of steel, he yanked a brick straight out of the wall and gave it a heft as a quick test. "… Can go screw yourself with a cactus! Chaos, CONTROL!"

Time slowed to a crawling pace as he wound up a final throw, getting the rock moving as fast as he could. The ballistics reticle in his vision took over the throw, lining up the stone brick for a perfect high-speed pitch. Time snapped back to normal speed after the throw, accelerating the brick to a blinding speed. With a sickening ripping noise, the stone sheared the manta ray clean in half in a spray of dark goo. The woman fell from her fractured mount, only to be caught by one of the monsters that darted out from the edge of the forest. Switching to heat vision, Tails could see many of the red blips in the distance disappearing through the trees, including the one carrying the lady.

Saito held his composure for about five seconds before bursting into laughter, bending over as he tried to catch his breath. "Oh god… Tails, that line, that delivery… Oh jeez… I can't breathe…!" he managed between breaths.

Tails let them have their laughs before promptly telling them to shut up. "I need to think. Getting back Tabitha's our priority now."

_New target approaching. High velocity, high altitude, direction west-southwest. Telltale sounds of a large compression engine combined with high-velocity aerodynamic surfaces such as propeller blades indicate some sort of artificial aircraft._

Tails turned to face the new noise source long before Saito and Louise could detect it. Students began to make their way out to the open field where the three were, drawn by the sounds of their brief scuffle at the gate.

"What's going on here?" Mrs. Cheveruse said, pointing at Louise and Saito – at least, Tails presumed it to be Mrs. Cheveruse, dressed as her younger self. "Why aren't you two in costume? What was all that vulgar yelling about?"

Tails didn't feel required to justify her questions with a response, only pointing in the direction of the new sound. "Someone's coming, and it's something big. Someone just tried to abduct Louise, so get ready."

A look of horror crossed her face. Some of the students following her drew the wands and swords of their various disguises, nervously looking for the first sign of combat.

_Motion sensors flaring. Movement in the trees. Analysis: Purple Bitch's soldiers, undoubtedly. Most likely ordered to return and exact some sort of revenge for her injured pride. Whether they are a threat at range is yet to be determined. Those armed with magic staves and other ranged weaponry should open fire upon gaining line-of-sight._

Tails turned back to the forest, switching to thermal vision to confirm what his HUD was blaring at him. Sure enough, the woods were lined with targets once more, waiting patiently. Tails engaged his magnified vision to get a better look at his targets, noting their extremely small heat signatures. Switching to normal vision revealed the same dark-skinned, purple-eyed monsters that had attacked them on the road to the castle.

"Guys, up front!" Tails yelled, raising his right arm and bracing it with his left. With a resounding crack of the guns mounted over his arm, he opened fire, picking off targets as they approached. Students began to swarm out of the academy to the gate, staves and swords at the ready. Fireballs and other spells flew at will, catching some of the rushing beasts head-on and engulfing them in flames.

In the back of Tails' mind, the buzzing of engines grew closer and closer. "I seriously hope that isn't enemy," he thought. He continued to pick off soldiers at will, but even the combined fire wasn't enough to slow the tide of the dark beasts.

Suddenly, the sound of engines came to a deafening roar overhead. Tails switched to thermals to get a good look in the waning light, only to be nearly blinded by the massive bright yellow blobs in his multi-colored thermal vision. Switching to normal vision revealed a massive jet of flame spewing forth from the starboard side some massive multi-engine aircraft high above. The descending fire swept the battlefield clean of beastly soldiers as fast as they could advance, leaving behind nothing but charred ash. After several moments of intense assault, the sheer number of casualties forced the remaining creatures to retreat to the woods once more.

_Allied ship is descending directly into the field, uncharacteristic of its apparent design. Two individual heat signatures on the upper deck indicate a human-controlled crew. Proceed with caution._

Tails watched as the massive flying thing slowly fell to the ground, coming to a rest in the open field in front of the main gate. He zoomed his vision on two sky-lined figures standing on the upper deck, only to almost have a mechanical heart attack from what he saw.

* * *

 

Tabitha appeared in a bright blue flash of light, landing softly in a soft patch of grass under the trees. Sylphid was waiting patiently in a nearby clearing, waiting patiently for orders from her master. She walked over and hopped up onto Sylphid, gripping her staff tightly. "We've only got one shot at this now that Tails has intervened," Tabitha thought. "Let's make it count."

With a quick pat on the neck from Tabitha, Sylphid leaped into the air, rapidly accelerating over the dark treetops.


	73. Season 3 Chapter 14

Tails watched as the man climbed down a wood-and-rope ladder on the side of the airship's hull, waiting patiently for him to touch down before running over to give him a hug.

"Professor Colbert, is it really you?" Tails asked with excitement. "We thought you were dead!"

Colbert let out a strangled cough, gasping for air under the choking mechanical strength of the fox’s embrace. "Sorry, Tails. I hated to let you guys go like that, but it was my one way out to resolve things," he said, prying himself free of the steely embrace. "What is with your body? Is this your costume for the Slepnir Ball? I thought we had missed it."

The metalloid figure raised his gun-arm in demonstration, showing off his newfound form. "Yep! I thought it would just be a costume, but I've got everything here that Emerl did. Copy abilities, ballistic reticles, optics, night vision, and combat sensors. I can even access my mem-"

Suddenly, the field erupted in a flash of light. With a flash of warmth and physical sensation, Tails could feel his body once more, his mind reeling with the sudden acquisition of physical sensation. He looked up to see Colbert shielding his eyes from the light as other students changed back as well.

The sound of someone clapping rang out behind Tails. "Alright students, the party has been put on pause until we handle the situation here," Osmond's voice called from the other side of the Academy perimeter wall. "Please return inside and wait until your costumes are re-applied."

Colbert laughed a little as Tails continued to stare into the distance beyond his arm amidst a brainfart of epic proportions. "Looks like the good things in life don't last as long as you would like, do they?" he joked.

Tails snapped back to reality with a shake of his head. "Yeah, I suppose. Dang, I was really looking forward to getting more use out of that memory scanning ability…"

"So how are your friends?" the teacher asked, turning to face Kirche as she stepped off of the ladder behind him. "She's been helping me with my studies, but I haven't kept in touch with any of the rest of you, naturally."

"Fine, I suppose…" Tails said, this voice trailing off into the distance with his thoughts. "Something's wrong with Tabitha. She attacked us just now and then disappeared. I think someone's controlling her."

Colbert frowned. "Did it look like there were any signs of magic? It could have been a fake copy, or the Ring of Andvari. I heard rumors that it went unaccounted for shortly before it was scheduled to be returned to the Lake."

Tails shook his head. "I doubt it. The Ring usually has some telltale signs, like glowing eyes or something. Then again, it didn't for Wales back at the lake… Nah, I still think it's something else. She left me a letter saying she'd be out on a mission. If that has anything to do with it, it makes me think it's her corrupt uncle, the king of her homeland, trying to get her killed, that whatever he ordered her to do forced her to turn against us.”

Saito and Louise walked over, but didn't disturb the silence of the two thinking scientists as they stood patiently. "If you don't know what she's doing, I'd suggest heading to their capitol, where the Gallian king, Joseph, resides," Colbert suggested. "If miss Tabitha is working for him, there are good chances she is reporting to him directly and would be found there. However, now that you are a chevalier, you have to gain permission from the Queen to cross Tristain's borders. Congratulations on your promotion, by the way."

Tails nodded. "Thanks. Yeah, that makes sense. We'll head over to the castle tomorrow and get permission. Anyways, what's this behind you?" he asked, letting his gaze wander over the sleek lines of the hull. The massive six-bladed propellers caught his eye, strongly resembling the blades of the Zero.

The professor gestured to his airship with a wave of his staff. "This is my masterpiece, the _Ostland_! I built it in secret in Germania, designed around technologies found in the Zero fighter Saito uses. I was secretly documenting the design of the craft in between classes and sending them back to Germania for construction while I was teaching here,” he said with a contagious grin. “For the sake of simplicity, it is fueled by coal rather than the Zero's liquid fuel, so I can reliably refuel it anywhere. Large coal-fired steam boilers drive the four turbines, generating thrust that pushes the ship forward."

Tails nodded in appreciation, looking over each detail of the engine design of professor Colbert's work before launching into a barrage of questions. "It's wonderful! Can we see the internals? The control room? How did you do that vertical landing? How fast can it go? Cargo space, how much?"

Colbert began climbing back up the ladder. "Of course! We'll take a quick look tonight, and we can give you a full tour tomorrow. If you want, I would be glad to take you to the castle tomorrow, as a demonstration."

Tails folded his chevalier’s cloak over his shoulders and revved up his tails, taking to the air. Racing up the side of the wooden craft, he landed gently on the wooden deck of the airship, well ahead of Colbert. The older man finally reached the top, gesturing around the main deck of the boat-like keel. "You'll notice that many of the features of the central hull are that of a ship. This was intentional, to give it emergency water-landing capabilities. The main control room is up there," he said, pointing at a metal room mounted on the rear of the ship with many windows. "The ship requires a minimum crew of two men to fuel the boiler fire and two at the controls, but more workers are advised to manage in-flight repairs and such. She carries enough coal and water for days of constant journey at a steady pace, and many hours at full speed. Cargo space is simply limited to how much fuel we carry in its place."

Not stopping to ask questions, Tails dashed along the length of the deck, plastering his face to the glass of the control room. An array of dials and gauges greeted him, glowing faintly in the evening light. Colbert eventually caught up, placing a hand on Tails' shoulder. "It's a wonder, isn't it? All thanks to you, Saito, and the Zero. Speaking of which, where is it?"

Tails shrugged before turning his attention back to the main deck. "The Queen sent a message saying it would be returned in a few days. It's almost completely destroyed, but that's what happens when you leave your toys out, I suppose."

Colbert laughed softly. "I find it funny, what you consider toys. Anyways, we should most likely save the rest for tomorrow. You still have a full night ahead of you at the ball."

Tails shook his head, his gaze wandering off over the distant woods. "No, now that Tabitha's in trouble, it's full battle-planning time. No more parties for me until we get this sorted out. It's my fault I didn't track her down when she left on that quest."

"No, that's where you are very, very mistaken, Miles," the man stated sternly. "It was entirely her own choice to take such a mission. If you were the target, it would have only made it easier for her to kill you if you had gone with her. I owe Miss Tabitha a debt as well; my life in fact. She casted the spell to fake my death that allowed me to escape with my life from lady Agnès. We will get her back, without a doubt. If you will not go to the party, at least promise me you will sleep until tomorrow. You will need your rest."

Colbert shepherded Tails back to the ladder, letting him jump down to the soft grass below with a quick spin of his tails to soften the landing. "I'll see you tomorrow, Tails! I have some work I need to finish onboard, but you need to go get your sleep," he called down.

Nodding back toward the once-deceased professor, Tails walked back into the Academy grounds, leaving Saito, Louise and Kirche standing by the ship. No matter how hard he tried, he couldn't get the image of Tabitha's face out of his head. Her eyes stared back at him in his mind, expressionless and deep.

"Don't worry, partner. We'll get her back," Ring interrupted, catching Tails by surprise. "By the way, don't forget to come pick me up out of the kitchen. I got booted out of your body when you transformed back."

Tails continued walking to the dorm tower, not breaking his stride. "I'll pick you up in the morning. I've got some work to do right now," he thought back.

"Like?"

"Packing. Just shut up and leave me alone for a bit."

Tails slowly climbed the stairs of Tabitha's dorm tower, making his way to her room. He opened the door and stepped into the dark room, shutting the door gently behind him. After a moment of fumbling around, he found an oil lamp that he lit with a slender beam from his T-Buster's plasma cutter. Carrying the lamp over to her bedside, he picked up the letter that Tabitha had left him from where it lay on the bed, taking a seat at her desk. Curious, he held the letter up to the glass bulb of the lamp, hoping that there might be the slightest chance of a hidden message. Dismayed that the gentle flame revealed nothing, he gently set the letter down on the desk and blew out the lamp, filling the air with the scent of smoke. He kicked off his shoes and flopped backwards onto Tabitha's bed, staring at the dark ceiling patiently until sleep overtook him.

* * *

 

Tails woke to the sound of footsteps as students made their way down the hall outside Tabitha’s room. He rubbed his eyes and stared at the ceiling, collecting his thoughts. Somehow, he’d managed to crawl under the sheets in his sleep, and the sun shining through the gap in the curtain had started to heat up the quilt around his feet.

"Alright, today's the day!" he told himself, throwing the covers to the end of the bed and rolling out of bed to his feet. Slipping on his shoes, he made a beeline for the workshop, only taking a brief detour to stop by the kitchen to pick up Ring and a bite to eat for breakfast.

Once inside the wooden shed of Colbert's workshop, Ring popped out of his sheath. "You look more energized than usual! What's on the agenda?" he clattered.

"I'd call it driven rather than energized," Tails commented bluntly, fastening the sheath around his waist. "Professor Colbert said he'd give me a ride to the castle in his new airship, which I'm certainly excited to see. However, more importantly, we're getting Tabitha back… Cosmo’s death, there’s not a chance in hell I’m letting that happen again."

"Sounds good, partner," Ring replied. "When do we leave?"

"I'm not really sure. Whenever professor Colbert is ready with the Ostland."

A voice called out to Tails, catching his attention as he stepped out of the workshop. Saito, Guiche and many of the Ordine Knights stood in the grass in front of the workshop, accompanied by Montmorency, Tiffania, Kirche, and Louise.

"I told everyone what happened. We've decided that we're coming too," Saito announced with a grin. "Tabitha's just as much our friend as yours, and Guiche is getting a bit trigger-happy for adventure."

Looking over his group of friends, a sense of joy filled his chest, his tails twitching with excitement. "Alright!" he cheered. "Thanks a lot, guys. I know you don't have to, but I'll need all the help I can get. Thanks a lot."

“Professor Colbert is already waiting for you by the front gate,” Guiche declared, “and is ready to take off whenever you are.”

Nodding, Tails led the group to the main gate, where the bald blue-clad teacher stood, watching the clouds scroll by in the sky. "Are you all ready to go?" he asked, his mind returning to reality. "It shouldn't take more than a half hour to get to the castle."

Tails gave Colbert a thumbs-up. "Ready when you are, Captain!"


	74. Season 3 Chapter 15

**SEASON 3 CHAPTER 15**

Tails watched as the man climbed down a wood-and-rope ladder on the side of the airship's hull, waiting patiently for him to reach ground before running over to give him a hug.

"Professor Colbert, is it really you?" Tails asked with excitement. "We thought you were dead!"

Colbert let out a strangled cough, gasping for air under the choking mechanical strength of the fox’s embrace. "Sorry, Tails. I hated to let you guys go like that, but it was my one way out to resolve things," he said, prying himself free of Tails' steely grip. "What is with your body? Is this your costume for the Slepnir Ball? I thought we had missed it."

The metalloid figure raised his gun-arm in demonstration, showing off his newfound form. "Yep! I thought it would just be a costume, but I've got everything here that Emerl did. Copy abilities, ballistic reticles, optics, night vision, and combat sensors. I can even access my mem-"

Suddenly, the field erupted in a flash of light. With a flash of warmth and physical sensation, Tails could feel his body once more, his mind reeling with the sudden acquisition of physical sensation. He looked up to see Colbert shielding his eyes from the light as other students changed back to their normal bodies one by one, flooding the field with light.

The sound of someone clapping rang out behind Tails. "Alright students, the party has been put on pause until we handle the situation here," Osmond's voice called from the other side of the Academy perimeter wall. "Please return inside and wait until your costumes are re-applied."

Colbert laughed a little as Tails continued to stare into the distance beyond his arm amidst a brainfart of epic proportions. "Looks like the good things in life don't last as long as you would like, do they?" he joked.

Tails snapped back to reality with a shake of his head. "Yeah, I suppose. Dang, I was really looking forward to getting more use out of that memory scanning ability…"

"So how are your friends?" the teacher asked, turning to face Kirche as she stepped off of the ladder behind him. "She's been helping me with my studies, but I haven't kept in touch with any of the rest of you, naturally."

"Fine, I suppose…" Tails said, this voice trailing off into the distance with his thoughts. "Something's wrong with Tabitha. She attacked us just now and then disappeared. I think someone's controlling her."

Colbert frowned. "Did it look like there were any signs of magic? It could have been a fake copy, or the Ring of Andvari. I heard rumors that it went unaccounted for shortly before it was scheduled to be returned to the Lake."

Tails shook his head. "I doubt it. The Ring usually has some telltale signs, like glowing eyes or something. Then again, it didn't for Wales back at the lake… Nah, I still think it's something else. She left me a letter saying she'd be out on a mission. If that has anything to do with it, it makes me think it's her corrupt uncle, the king of her homeland, trying to get her killed, that whatever he ordered her to do forced her to turn against us.”

Saito and Louise walked over, but didn't disturb the silence of the two thinking scientists as they stood patiently. "If you don't know what she's doing, I'd suggest heading to the town of Al Hambra, where King Joseph resides at a summer palace at this time of year," Colbert suggested. "If miss Tabitha is working for him, forcibly or not, there are good chances she is reporting to him directly and would be found there. However, now that you are a chevalier, you have to gain permission from the Queen to cross Tristain's borders. Congratulations on your promotion, by the way."

Tails nodded. "Thanks. Yeah, that makes sense. We'll head over to the castle tomorrow and get permission. Anyways, what's this behind you?" he asked, letting his gaze wander over the sleek lines of the hull. The massive six-bladed propellers caught his eye, strongly resembling the blades of the Zero.

The professor gestured to his airship with a wave of his staff. "This is my masterpiece, the _Ostland_! I built it in secret in Germania, designed around technologies found in the Zero fighter Saito uses. I was secretly documenting the design of the craft in between classes and sending them back to Germania for construction while I was teaching here,” he said with a contagious grin. “For the sake of simplicity, it is fueled by coal rather than the Zero's liquid fuel, so I can reliably refuel it anywhere. Large coal-fired steam boilers drive the four turbines, generating thrust that pushes the ship forward."

Tails nodded in appreciation, looking over each detail of the engine design of professor Colbert's work before launching into a barrage of questions. "It's wonderful! Can we see the internals? The control room? How did you do that vertical landing? How fast can it go? Cargo space, how much?"

Colbert began climbing back up the ladder. "Of course! We'll take a quick look tonight, and we can give you a full tour tomorrow. If you want, I would be glad to take you to the castle tomorrow, as a demonstration."

Tails folded his chevalier’s cloak over his shoulders and revved up his tails, taking to the air. Racing up the side of the wooden craft, he landed gently on the wooden deck of the airship, well ahead of Colbert. The older man finally reached the top, gesturing around the main deck of the boat-like keel. "You'll notice that many of the features of the central hull are that of a ship. This was intentional, to give it emergency water-landing capabilities. The main control room is up there," he said, pointing at a metal room mounted on the rear of the ship with many windows. "The ship requires a minimum crew of two men to fuel the boiler fire and two at the controls, but more workers are advised to manage in-flight repairs and such. She carries enough coal and water for days of constant journey at a steady pace, and many hours at full speed. Cargo space is simply limited to how much fuel we carry in its place."

Not stopping to ask questions, Tails dashed along the length of the deck, plastering his face to the glass of the control room. An array of dials and gauges greeted him, glowing faintly in the evening light. Colbert eventually caught up, placing a hand on Tails' shoulder. "It's a wonder, isn't it? All thanks to you, Saito, and the Zero. Speaking of which, where is it?"

Tails shrugged before turning his attention back to the main deck. "The Queen sent a message saying it would be returned in a few days. It's almost completely destroyed, but that's what happens when you leave your toys out, I suppose."

Colbert laughed softly. "I find it funny, what you consider toys. Anyways, we should most likely save the rest for tomorrow. You still have a full night ahead of you at the ball."

Tails shook his head, his gaze wandering off over the distant woods. "No, now that Tabitha's in trouble, it's full battle-planning time. No more parties for me until we get this sorted out. It's my fault I didn't track her down when she left on that quest."

"No, that's where you are very, very mistaken, Miles," the man stated sternly. "It was entirely her own choice to take such a mission. If you were the target, it would have only made it easier for her to kill you if you had gone with her. I owe Miss Tabitha a debt as well; my life in fact. She casted the spell to fake my death that allowed me to escape with my life from lady Agnès. We will get her back, without a doubt. If you will not go to the party, at least promise me you will sleep until tomorrow. You will need your rest."

Colbert shepherded Tails back to the ladder, letting him jump down to the soft grass below with a quick spin of his tails to soften the landing. "I'll see you tomorrow, Tails! I have some work I need to finish onboard, but you need to go get your sleep," he called down.

Nodding back toward the once-deceased professor, Tails walked back into the Academy grounds, leaving Saito, Louise and Kirche standing by the ship. No matter how hard he tried, he couldn't get the image of Tabitha's face out of his head. Her eyes stared back at him in his mind, expressionless and deep.

"Don't worry, partner. We'll get her back," Ring interrupted, catching Tails by surprise. "By the way, don't forget to come pick me up out of the kitchen. I got booted out of your body when you transformed back."

Tails continued walking to the dorm tower, not breaking his stride. "I'll pick you up in the morning. I've got some work to do right now," he thought back.

"Like?"

"Packing. Just shut up and leave me alone for a bit."

Tails slowly climbed the stairs of Tabitha's dorm tower, making his way to her room. He opened the door and stepped into the dark room, shutting the door gently behind him. After a moment of fumbling around, he found an oil lamp that he lit with a slender beam from his T-Buster's plasma cutter. Carrying the lamp over to her bedside, he picked up the letter that Tabitha had left him from where it lay on the bed, taking a seat at her desk. Curious, he held the letter up to the glass bulb of the lamp, hoping that there might be the slightest chance of a hidden message. Dismayed that the gentle flame revealed nothing, he gently set the letter down on the desk and blew out the lamp, filling the air with the scent of smoke. He kicked off his shoes and flopped backwards onto Tabitha's bed, staring at the dark ceiling patiently until sleep overtook him.

* * *

 

Tails woke to the sound of footsteps as students made their way down the hall outside Tabitha’s room. He rubbed his eyes and stared at the ceiling, collecting his thoughts. Somehow, he’d managed to crawl under the sheets in his sleep, and the sun shining through the gap in the curtain had started to heat up the quilt around his feet.

"Alright, today's the day!" he told himself, throwing the covers to the end of the bed and rolling out of bed to his feet. Slipping on his shoes, he made a beeline for the workshop, only taking a brief detour to stop by the kitchen to pick up Ring and a bite to eat for breakfast.

Once inside the wooden shed of Colbert's workshop, Ring popped out of his sheath. "You look more energized than usual! What's on the agenda?" he clattered.

"I'd call it driven rather than energized," Tails commented bluntly, fastening the sheath around his waist. "Professor Colbert said he'd give me a ride to the castle in his new airship, which I'm certainly excited to see. However, more importantly, we're getting Tabitha back… Cosmo’s death, there’s not a chance in hell I’m letting that happen again."

"Sounds good, partner," Ring replied. "When do we leave?"

"I'm not really sure. Whenever professor Colbert is ready with the Ostland."

A voice called out to Tails, catching his attention as he stepped out of the workshop. Saito, Guiche and many of the Ordine Knights stood in the grass in front of the workshop, accompanied by Montmorency, Tiffania, Kirche, and Louise.

"I told everyone what happened. We've decided that we're coming too," Saito announced with a grin. "Tabitha's just as much our friend as yours, and Guiche is getting a bit trigger-happy for adventure."

Looking over his group of friends, a sense of joy filled his chest, his tails twitching with excitement. "Alright!" he cheered. "Thanks a lot, guys. I know you don't have to, but I'll need all the help I can get. Thanks a lot."

“Professor Colbert is already waiting for you by the front gate,” Guiche declared, “and is ready to take off whenever you are.”

Nodding, Tails led the group to the main gate, where the bald blue-clad teacher stood, watching the clouds scroll by in the sky. "Are you all ready to go?" he asked, his mind returning to reality. "It shouldn't take more than a half hour to get to the castle."

The fox gave Colbert an enthusiastic thumbs-up. "Ready when you are, Captain!"


	75. Season 3 Chapter 16

With a massive whooshing roar, the coals of the main boiler roared into flaming life at Mr. Colbert's fire spell. Tails worked to slam the massive boiler doors shut, opening a few air vents as instructed.

"This is really something else, professor!" Tails yelled over the fire and engines. "How long did it take you to build this?"

Professor Colbert headed back to the main door, with Tails following closely behind. The door latched shut with a mechanical click behind the two, sealing away the din of the engine room. "Ever since I faked my death, I was working on this project. I had drafted the plans well ahead of time, almost as soon as I came into contact with the Zero," the professor explained as he made his way back to the control room. "I sent diagrams for parts ahead of me to Germania, and simply oversaw the construction by the time I arrived. Being heavily invested in military technologies, only Germania was effectively suited to produce the mass quantities of specialties to produce the Ostland. I promised that I would equip the Germanians with a fleet of the ships after I ensured that the prototype would work effectively, in order to gain their cooperation."

The long hallways and stairs finally ended in a single wooden door that professor Colbert breezed through. Tails stepped into the control room that he had seen last night, now coated in bright light of the gleaming metal. He could see many of the students down on the grass below as they gave their final wave. A slight breeze rustled the grass of the open field in front of the ship, attracting Tails' attention as he watched the waves of moving grass. With a slight adjustment of a few levers by Colbert, steam routed from the boiler spurred the massive turbines into life. Saito and the others standing out on the main deck jumped in surprise as the roar of the propellers filled the air.

"So, you never answered my question last night," Tails said. "How does this thing take off vertically?"

Colbert's gaze never left the control panels in front of him. "It's a bit hard to explain without a thorough knowledge of magic, but it is, essentially, flight magic," he explained. "There is a spell placed on the ship's keel that allows it to be affected by flight spells, but only in the vertical direction and only by an assigned few. It's a safety measure, so that only a few can actually get the ship off of the ground. If you could do me a favor, take a seat over at that control panel and do as I tell you," he added, pointing to a chair to his right.

Tails took a seat at the bench, watching several dials and gauges that flickered and wobbled as pressure built in the system. He followed professor Colbert's instructions as closely as possible, all the while humming  _Fly me to the Moon_. Without much effort, the airship glided upward into the air before the turbines reached optimal thrust, slowly tugging the ship forward. Tails watched with a smile as everyone grabbed hold on a railing, watching the world fly the side of the ship by in wonder as they gained speed.

A thought passed through Tails' head, sparking his imagination. "Hey, professor," he said, catching the man's attention. "Do you know anything about the magic mirror used in the ball last night? Like, what it does when you have a costume on?"

Colbert scratched his head in confusion. "I'm not quite sure what you are asking. Could you clarify?"

"Well, to be specific, this song I was just humming. I didn't know anything about music before, but after Emerl's copy ability kicked in and analyzed the pianist, I was able to play piano perfectly. Now I can't seem to get this song out of my head."

The bald man snapped his fingers in understanding. "Okay, I understand! Yes, I have heard stories that some people take on the innate skills of the person they disguise themselves as. You might have gone to bed before this began, but students often hold sparring in their costumes as a sort of 'fantasy duel', to pit their heroes against each other to see who is the strongest. While it is true that it's really the students behind the costumes, they rarely inherit some weapons skill and magic ability from their subjects. I've never heard of it lasting outside of the costume, however."

Tails shrugged in reply. "I guess I'd have to sit down at a piano to see if it really transferred over. Maybe I just remember it really well because it was so shocking for me…"

Clouds whizzed by overhead as the airship gained altitude, racing through the air at an increasing pace. Behind him, The sound of footsteps thundered in the hall outside the control room. Tails watched with interest as Saito blasted past the open doorway, panting hard as he sprinted down the short hallway by the control room. Shortly behind him, Louise and the other girls stampeded down the hall, yelling for the Japanese boy to slow down.

"Looks like Saito is having fun!" professor Colbert remarked with a laugh. The statement fell flat on Tails, though, as his mind began to drift off elsewhere…

* * *

 

Sylphid touched down gently after a full night and morning of flying, not once stopping to rest. Tabitha jumped down from the blue dragon's scaly back, landing softly in the grass beside the stone path. The quiet shuffle of leather on stone filled the silence as she strode over to the mansion that sprawled before her, the lush lawn strewn with broken glass from the smashed-out windows that glittered in the grey afternoon light. "They beat us here…" she thought, cautiously approaching the ransacked mansion with her staff at the ready.

"Are you sure this is safe?" Sylphid's translated voice boomed, breaking the silence. Although Tabitha had cast a translation spell on Sylphid years before and could understand her perfectly, the young mage chose to simply acknowledge the dragon with an upheld finger to silence her. Climbing the few steps up to the front door of the manor that stood ajar, she slipped into the building and shut the doors, cutting off Sylphid's complaints with a with a metallic click. Silence filled the air once more as she tread quietly over the tattered carpets.

"They didn't leave a thing overturned, did they?" she thought to herself. Damage to the house was extensive; the finely painted wallpaper was cut and peeled, the paintings snapped in half, and almost every piece of furniture in sight forcefully dismantled and strewn over the floor. She gingerly worked her way through the rubble to a familiar door, once again standing slightly open. Poking her head inside, she found that her mother’s room was relatively intact, despite the usual messiness left behind by her deranged parent, who was unsurprisingly absent. Even the large glass wall across from the door was intact, the garden beyond it upturned and ravaged.

"I should have guessed. Sheffield beat me back to Joseph by a considerable amount," she thought, stepping into the room. "We didn't have a chance to outrun his scouts, given the distance…". A doll at Tabitha's foot caught her eye. Curious, she knelt down to pick it up, feeling the soft silk that made up the doll’s clothes. "I'm surprised she left this behind… I suppose she didn't have a choice.”

The sound of a book slamming shut broke the eerie silence, throwing Tabitha into full alert as she turned to face the intruder. A pale-skinned man garbed in brown and a wide-brimmed hat stepped out of one of the dark corners of the room, a book in hand. He seemed unusually familiar, but she couldn't quite place it…

"Where is mother?" Tabitha stated, raising her staff in a defensive stance.

"The lady that Gallian soldiers dragged off earlier? No clue," the man replied with an indignant shrug.

Without warning, Tabitha quickly charged an icicle spell and sent it hurtling toward the man's head with blinding speed. To her surprise, the icicle shattered as it impacted some invisible shield millimeters from the man's nose, failing to elicit even the slightest flinch from its target.

"I'm sorry. Was that an attempt to kill me? Your uncle wouldn't be too fond of that, I'd imagine," the man replied cooly, slowly stepping forward. "Since I know you're in rather deep trouble as it is, I'll forget that just happened. Do us a favor and put down your sta-"

A loud crash filled the room as the wall of glass behind Tabitha erupted into a spray of shards as Sylphid smashed into the room, claws at the ready and teeth bared. "Stay away from Sister, you asshole!" she roared, swiping at the man.

The man let out an insulting yawn as he raised his arm, allowing his magical shield to deflect the blow. "You're going to have to try much harder than that, Nature Dragon," he said. With a quick snap of his fingers, Sylphid shuddered and collapsed to the ground, knocked out cold.

"Ancient magic… an elf!" Tabitha muttered to herself, taking a step back.

The mysterious man removed his hat, revealing large pointed ears that poked out beyond his long, silvery-blond hair. "Yes, although I dislike that term for it. Call it spiritual power, if you will."

Tabitha raised her staff, but the elf casually lobbed the book he held at Tabitha, forcing her to dodge. She drew Tails' gunmetal-grey handgun from a pocket in her cloak, leveling it at center-mass on the elf's chest. With a squeeze of the trigger, the handgun roared, but she had jerked the gun in bracing for the recoil.

The round went wide, clipping the man's lower-left waist. Gritting his teeth, the elf-man snapped his fingers before she could bring the handgun back on target, bringing her crumpling to the ground in a wave of fatigue.

"You HAD to go and make this hard, didn't you…" Tabitha heard the man mutter, shortly before everything faded into blackness.

* * *

 

Time seemed to fly by as Tails worked the controls of the airship alongside professor Colbert. Before long, the castle grew into view, as if it were being zoomed in upon under the lens of a microscope.

"Miles, bring the speed down to about fifteen knots while I lower altitude," Colbert called as he busied himself with his own section of the control room. Tails lowered a few levers to vent steam from the lines headed to the turbines, followed by a lever to send a signal to the coaling crew to reduce input.

The deck of the airship shuddered as the turbines lost speed, gently slowing the ship down as the ship lost thrust. "That can't be intentional…" he thought to himself. Regardless, he continued to lower the speed of the turbines until they came to a dead stop, allowing the ship to silently glide to a clear landing space. With his staff, Colbert set the ship down in a grass clearing not far from the castle without so much as a bump.

"I'm sorry about that vibration," Colbert stated, scratching the back of his head. "It's something I have not quite figured out as of yet. Perhaps you have an idea?"

Tails stood up from his seat, stretching to touch his toes for comfort. "Since it's related to slowing down, my only guess is that the central axle running through the turbine has stretched over hours of use. Whichever engine is the offender, the nose cone of the propeller is no longer nearly flush with the external frame, so there's more space. When the engine is running at full power, the turbines are pulling the ship forward, stretching the axle and keeping that space as big as possible. However, when we drop power really fast like that, the turbines aren't pulling the ship as fast as it's already going, so they slide back, slamming the nosecone into the cowling."

A look of surprise dawned upon the professor. He grabbed a brass-tubed spyglass from a compartment and extended it, taking a close look at the farthest turbine on the right wing. "Well, that's a surprise… You were spot on, Miles. There's a gap between the nosecone and the ring of bearings, much bigger than I had intended. I suppose we can tighten the bolt at the rear of the axle for now, but we will need to eventually have that replaced before it stretches too far… A shame."

"No big deal for now, I'm sure she'll be fine for now," Tails replied, standing upright once more. "We need to get headed to the castle. The faster we can get approval from the Queen, the faster we can get out of here. You can go handle re-fueling while we deal with the diplomacy, I guess."

Colbert collapsed the spyglass and replaced it in its bin. "Of course. With assistance of a royal mage or two, we should be able to fetch enough coal from the castle supplier to top off in an hour or so. I wish you the best with your bid with the Queen!"

With a short nod, Tails took off for the castle, racing to catch up with the others that had already departed.


	76. Season 3 Chapter 17

"You're joking, right?"

Saito stood in shock in front of the Queen, mouth agape and eyes wide over what she had just explained to him. "You're telling me that one of our friends is in mortal danger, the heir to the Gallian throne no less, and we've just got to sit by and wait for her to die?"

Henrietta gave a solemn nod, averting her eyes from Saito's and Tails' gazes. "While Gallian raids on our borders have increased significantly, we are in no shape to fight back thanks to our losses in Gotha against Albion. We cannot risk starting a war with Gallia, who is notably more thoroughly equipped for such ordeals," she stated. "I'm terribly sorry, but I simply can't let my two best knights head off into enemy territory like this."

Louise, Saito, and Tails stood in silence, refusing to back down an inch. "Fine. If it's instigating a war you're worried about, then you can have these back," Saito replied. He hastily undid the clasp of his cloak, removing it from his shoulders and hastily folding it into a shoddy square. "If we aren't your knights, they can't trace us. Right?"

Tails grinned slightly as he followed suit, stacking his cloak and clasp on top of Saito's before handing the bundle to Henrietta. "He's right. Besides, she's my master," the fox said, bowing slightly in respect. "I can't leave her when she's in danger. That's not what Familiars do. Or friends, for that matter."

Slight tears formed in the corner of Henrietta's eyes as Tails stepped back in line with Saito, adjusting the shoulder strap of Ring's sheath. "I can't believe you two…" she mumbled, setting aside the two bundles of cloth. She wiped her eyes with the back of her hand and drew her mace, leveling it with the two boys. "Very well. If I cannot stop you from going as your superior, I will stop you as your Queen. You are both hereby under arrest. Guards!"

A group of burly, armored men poured in through the throne room door, surrounding the two boys with their halberds leveled at their chest. "Your orders, Your Highness?" a decorated soldier asked, presumably her head of the guard.

"Take them to the dungeon. Keep them fed and well cared for, but under supervision at all times. They are not to leave the premises at all costs. Also, send word to the reserve guards to fetch any rope or chain we have, and to tie down their airship until I give them permission to leave. They are not to remove or add any cargo from the airship unless I give them explicit permission."

Without so much as a word from the guards, Tails and Saito were shepherded at bladepoint through the halls and stairs of the castle until they reached an upper-level cell. The two boys were pushed into the cell and locked in by a thick plate-metal door that slammed shut behind them, followed by the mechanical clicks of several hefty locks.

Saito took a seat on a wooden bench mounted to the stone cell wall underneath a bar window. "Now what? Everyone will be outside waiting for us, and we might be stuck in here for days!"

Tails shrugged and looked around the cell, running several possibilities through his head. "I dunno. We just wait, I suppose. It's not as if they're going to starve us in here."

Saito shot Tails a quizzical look. "Yeah but what about Tab-"

Tails pressed a finger to his lips to hush Saito, pointing to Ring with his other hand. "Not much we can do now, I suppose," he replied. "I'm going to take a nap. Best case, Louise negotiates something with the Queen and we get to work. Worst case… let's not think about it."

Clearing his mind, Tails tapped Ring's pommel silently as he laid back on a second wooden bench on the opposite wall from Saito. "Ring, can you send messages back and forth between me and Saito?" he thought.

"Shoot. I've never been good at playing mailman, but I'll do my best," Ring replied, his growly voice echoing in Tails' mind.

"Tell him that I think the guards are listening, and that we need to wait a while. Professor Colbert needs an hour to refuel, if he's able to at all now that Henrietta's shut him down. We may be going on foot when we break out. We'll wait for Louise, get the final verdict, and then blow this joint. I'll cut a hole in the wall and fly us down the hill, where we'll hide out in town on the rooftops. Did you get all of that?"

"I just passed it on as you spoke. Saito's asking what to do about the airship if we go on foot, and what to do about the others."

"Tell him I'll contact professor Colbert via your telepathy powers before we get out of town, to let him get out once the Queen gives him the all-clear. We'll need some disguises if we're carrying a big group, so ask him for some ideas. It'll have to be good, because the guards will be on full alert for the better half of a day, if not two days depending on how long we take to get geared. Pass it on."

"Done. You're not going to like what he's suggesting…"

Tails cringed at the thought. "Ugh, not that guy! Anybody but him. He scares me more than half of the stuff I've seen over the years, and that's saying a lot…"

* * *

 

Tabitha stirred slowly from her dreamless sleep, bringing her hands to her eyes to rub them open. She cracked her eyes and fumbled for her glasses, finding them sitting on a nearby nightstand. Unfolding the spectacles’ arms, she pushed the red, oval-framed glasses onto her face and sat up, observing her surroundings. A wave of twisted, vile  nostalgia hit her as memories of her childhood filled her mind. The room she was imprisoned in was a room she had often been held in between missions from her uncle before she was sentenced to life in the Academy, a room in his summer residence named after the town of Alhambra.

"I wouldn't try to run, if I were you," a familiar voice called out. Tabitha instantly recognized it as the blond elf from before and reached for her handgun, but it was nowhere to be found. She had been changed into a nightgown at some point, rendering her weaponless.

The elf sat up from a cushioned bench on the wall opposite the foot of Tabitha's bed. "I have your staff. Your other weapon is in a vault somewhere, waiting to be researched for replication. Please don't fight, as I have orders to kill you if you resist."

"Mother? Dragon?" Tabitha asked calmly, not willing to give her opponent any satisfaction from an outburst.

Without watching where he threw it, the elf casually tossed some book he had been reading. The book landed on a far table with a hollow thud and skidded for a ways to the edge of the wooden surface. "Your dragon is in captivity for re-taming, but is still asleep at the moment. As for your mother, it appears to be your lucky day. She's asleep in her chamber not too far from here, and I've been given permission to let you see her. Whenever you're ready, Princess."

"I suppose it's about time. She'll probably reject me anyway…" Tabitha thought, nodding in acknowledgement. She stepped out of bed into a waiting pair of slippers and silently strode over to the man, following him out of the room. The elf stopped suddenly in front of a room only a few doors down from her own, placing a hand on the doorknob. "She's asleep under a spell similar to what I used on you, so she won't readily wake. I suggest you leave it that way, for the maid's sake if not your own," he stated. Only after Tabitha nodded in assent did he twist the doorknob, ushering her inside.

Inside, the elderly-looking woman she knew all too well lay in bed, the sheets as smooth as glass in the pale blue light that streamed through the closed shades over the nearby window. Unable to control herself anymore, Tabitha rushed over to the bedside, watching her mother with softened eyes. Only the earliest memories of her childhood passed through her mind as she watched her sleeping mother, the bedsheets rising and falling with every painfully slow breath.

The elf knocked twice on the door, catching Tabitha's attention. "You have permission to move between this room and your own at will, but any deviation from this path will give me grounds to kill you. I will be keeping watch at all times, so don't think I don't see you when I'm not around," he explained. Before going further, he withdrew another book from some interior pocket of his cloak. "Also, I figured you might like this back. You left it here before heading off to capture that pink-haired girl king Joseph wanted, which, by the way, congratulations on screwing that up. He's been especially angry ever since, which really does put me in an unpleasant situation... Since you won’t have much time, anyway, try to enjoy yourself before we're done. I can't imagine having much worth living for, like that," he added, nodding toward the sleeping, elderly-looking woman.

Tabitha fetched the book from the elf's outstretched hand, not bothering to look at the cover. "Like her…?" she thought, looking back to her mother. It only had just crossed her mind that her power-hungry, deranged uncle might actually not kill her. Her eyes widened at the thought.

Reading her reaction, the elf nodded. "That's right. The same potion that broke your mother's heart. Only elves can produce it, or those under the instruction and assistance of elves. Naturally, that means me. The potion will be ready in a few days' time, so I suggest you enjoy your life as you remember it. I can't guarantee you'll remember much once you take it."

The elf turned back to the door and began to step out, but poked his head back in before closing it completely. "By the way, if you ever intend to address me, my name is Vitartial. I'll be waiting in your room until you are done here."

With that, the door shut with a quiet click, leaving Tabitha to herself. Looking around the room, she pulled up a chair to the bedside and cracked open the book, flipping to a random story from Andersen's collection of fairy tales.

"I wonder if they will come for me," she thought, reading the words on the page like a mindless drone. "I did attack them… And how will they get here in time? It's not as if they have Sylphid…"

* * *

 

The shriek of metal on metal ripped Tails from his light nap, his teeth clenched together at the sudden sound. A flurry of pink hair blew past him as Louise entered the room, rushing over to Saito. Without warning, she raised her hand and brought it down hard, slapping him hard enough to leave his cheek bright red from the blow. "Saito, what the hell was that all about?!" she yelled over the shriek and slam of the cell door being shut. "We could have gone home, if you hadn't run your damn mouth! Now look what you did. Got yourself in jail!”

Saito recovered from the blow, rubbing his reddened cheek. "Hey, I did what I thought was right at the time. I figured if we released ourselves from being her personal knights, she might let us go. I didn't realize she needs us that much… Wait, why are you in jail?!? Where's your cloak?"

Louise huffed and broke eye contact with him, looking back at the cell door and crossing her arms. "Well, it's not right for a master to leave her familiar in a precarious situation. Nor is it right for a familiar to question their master's judgement!" she declared, her face bright red.

Tails cleared his throat to gain the two arguing students’ attention. "Are we expecting anyone else, or are they out helping professor Colbert?"

"Not that I know of," Louise replied. However, contrary to her statement, Tails could hear yelling and the clanking of plate armor as more guards wrestled their way down the stairs. Without warning, the steel cell door flew open once more as two blond-haired boys were booted inside, landing face first on the cobblestone floor.

Guiche sprang to his feet and quickly banged on the metal door. "Hey, idiots! We're nobility! Prisoners or not, you treat us better!"

"Shut up. The faster you guys calm down, the faster the Queen will release you, I'd wager," one of the guards outside the door said. "It also reduces how much time we waste babysitting you guys."

With a sigh, Tails leaned back against the stone wall as Guiche’s brief tantrum came to a close as he took a seat on the floor at the back of the cell. When everyone was silent, he calmly stood up, walked over to the cell door, and peeked out. Two guards stood on either side of the door, in full armor and armed with a single halberd each. "If you're that bored standing guard, do you want to play a game? It's not like we have much better to do, either," he asked.

The guard on the left eyed the fox suspiciously through the small bar-covered hole in the door. "I don't think it'd be good if the captain found us playing games with prisoners…"

Overhearing the conversation, the guard on the right shrugged. "Hey, he's not due on patrol for hours, and even then he'll probably just blackmail Fred into doing it for him again. What's the harm?"

Tails gave the two guards a smile, nodding in appreciation. "Great! Have you ever heard of a game called 'Simon Says'? It's a game where one person is the leader, and they call out actions by saying 'Simon says place your hands on your hips', or some other action. It gets faster as time goes on, but the real kicker is if they call an action without saying 'Simon Says'. If you do an action that the caller doesn't call Simon for, that person is out of the game. Care to try? We can all play."

"And what if we win?" the guard on the left asked. "I'm just as content sitting here, so there should be something in it for us."

Louise stepped up to the bars, addressing the guards. "All of the losers chip in to buy the winner a round at a pub of their choice. Fair?"

The guard on the right gave his buddy a friendly punch in the shoulder, nodding. "Yeah, I'm down for that! Come on, Thomas!"

Tails nodded and looked back at the rest of the gang inside the cell. "Got that, everyone? Let's do a quick warm-up before we start…"

After five minutes of demonstration, Tails stood next to the door and started the game. Little did the guards know, the fox engaged his T-Buster and prepped a low charge, holding the red arm-cannon behind his back to conceal the light. The calls became faster and faster, yet the guards were able to keep up with the calls. "It's about time… Gonna have to be quick," he thought to himself.

"Place your hands on the door!" Tails called. Almost immediately, he heard four metallic clangs on the cell door, confirming that the guards outside had fallen for the trick. Before any of his cell-mates could fall for it as well, he raised his T-Buster to the door and discharged the weapon’s capacitors into the thick metal plate.

The electrical current arced through the steel gauntlets of the guards and into their bodies, with small fingers of electricity jumping from plate to plate as the charge sought a path to the ground. After moments of jittering spasms, the soldiers fell to the ground in a loud crash of metal on stone.

Without wasting a single moment, Tails rushed over to the bar window and engaged the T-Buster's plasma cutter function, hacking a decent-sized hole in the stone wall. With Saito's help pushing, the circle of cobblestone dropped to the ground outside, smashing into several pieces a story below.

"Come on! The guards had to have heard that," Saito called, motioning to Tails who was now hovering outside by his tails. "We need to get to Scarron's place and get a costume to get out of town before security tightens!"

The gang began filing out of the hole one by one as Tails lowered them to the ground. It wasn't long until everyone was on the ground, hiding behind a sculpted bush in case guards came by.

"Ok, who knows how to get to this 'Scarron' person's place?" Guiche asked in a low whisper. Saito peaked around the corner to check for soldiers, but none had arrived yet surprisingly.

"I can get us there," Louise offered. "Just follow carefully, as we'll be going through a lot of back alleys to avoid suspicion." Without a word more, she took off through the gardens with the rest of the group in tow, headed for Scarron's inn.


	77. Season 3 Chapter 18

It wasn't long until the five reached Scarron's bar, by way of winding, maze-like back alleys.

"I'm pretty sure we looped back on ourselves like, five times on our way here…" Guiche complained, taking a breather in front of the alley side-door to the kitchen.

"Shut up! I got us here, didn't I?" Louise retorted, threatening him with a raised hand. "Let's just get inside before someone catches us."

"Or before someone pisses you off again…" Saito added, gently opening the door. He poked his head in to ensure that they wouldn't be spotted before proceeding. Other than a few muffled voices, the bar was devoid of life. He motioned for the rest of the group to stay in the kitchen, while he headed off to pursue the voices upstairs.

"Well, now what?" Malicorne whispered. "If they find us, they could turn us in and then we'd be back where we started!"

Everyone gave a collective gesture of indifference, ranging from shrugs to facial expressions. "No one really knows we've escaped yet, I think," Tails offered. "It's only a matter of time until the castle guards spread the word, but I don't think they've gotten this far into town yet, if at all."

The room suddenly resounded with creaking wood and stomping feet as someone came flying down the stairs. As if he materialized out of thin air, Tails found himself assaulted by the muscly she-man as Scarron wrapped the fox in a choking embrace.

"Miles, it's so good to see you!" Scarron cried, tears of joy running down his face into Tails' head fur. "It's been so long since we last met, but I'm so glad you've returned!"

With no need to be asked, Guiche and Malicorne helped pry Tails free of Scarron's grasp, letting the fox catch his breath. "It's good to see you too, Scarron…" Tails replied tiredly, casually probing his chest for broken ribs. "Did Saito tell you what's going on?"

"Yes and no," the crossdressing man stated, watching the group intently as his eyes shifted from target to target. "Although, I have a sneaking suspicion that it's related to the guard patrols running themselves ragged up and down the street. What do you need from us? Your other friends are already upstairs."

"Other friends… professor Colbert and his group?" Louise asked, letting her voice get a little too loud. The large man hushed her with a finger to his lips, nodding. "Yes. The guards are after them, too. You are welcome to go meet with them, but keep things quiet. Guard patrols have been prone to bursting into any house they like recently."

Scarron herded the group of students upstairs to a bedroom at the far end of the single upstairs hallway. Inside, the group found professor Colbert, Kirche, Montmorency, Reynald, Tiffania, and a few other Academy students were waiting patiently, gathered around an ongoing chess game. Colbert hopped to his feet and rushed to greet Saito and his group, shaking their hands with a smile on his face. "I'm so relieved that you're all ok!" he stated, taking a tally of all the students in the room. "With you here, that should be everybody."

Tails pushed to the front of the group, catching professor Colbert's attention. "Where is the Ostland? Did you guys get the coal you needed?"

"Well…" Colbert began, looking back at his students. "We did get the coal onboard, but the castle guards seized the ship and tied it down with massive ropes and chains, forcing us off. There's not much of a chance getting the ship free without a lot of gunpowder, or many fire mages and a fair bit of time."

Tails stepped aside as Louise and the others pushed past him into the room before returning to his conversation. "That's not a problem. I just need you to be a decoy for us. The Queen will assume we are onboard if the ship takes off, so we can use that as a decoy while a small group of us slips out the back on foot to Gallia. Even though Wardes is gone, I'm sure the rest of the Griffon Knights are still around with a new leader, and they might be able to chase you. How many people do you need to run the Ostland?"

The bald professor rubbed his face as he mulled things over. "For the safety of the students, at least three excluding myself. Rotating through three coalers would allow us to maintain maximum speed almost indefinitely… Take who you need, and I'll be able to get the rest home safely. We will work our way southeast as if we were to loop through Germania to Gallia, but then head north and loop back to the Academy instead. That should give you enough time to get out of the country, I would imagine."

"Great!" Tails replied with a nod, turning to Scarron. "Alright, now it's your turn. We need a disguise to get us out of town. I'm thinking… eight of us, in total. Disguises for seven, plus transportation. What can you do?"

"Oh, I have the absolute BEST disguises for you!" the flamboyant man exclaimed. "There was a play a little while back that we used a circus outfit for, and I'm sure I can borrow a wagon from a close friend of mine. I'm not quite sure how to disguise you, however… perhaps simply some makeup?"

Tails dismissed Scarron with a shake of his head. "I won't need a disguise. I'll be going with Colbert to cut the chains on the Ostland, then slip away into the woods while the guards chase them. The disguise group should be near or across the border by the time I circle back to slip across and meet up."

Scarron nodded. "Brilliant! My, this will look perfect! Well, we should get right to it, shouldn't we!"

Professor Colbert nodded and clapped a few times, getting the students' attention. "Alright, students, it's almost time. Miles here will be explaining the plan. Miles?"

Tails popped his knuckles and stepped forward to meet the student's gazes around the room. "Alright. If we're lucky, this should work pretty smoothly…"

* * *

 

The blue-haired man sat patiently against his throne, watching the world go by through the far windows of his throne room. Joseph did not like being bored, but thus was the life of a king with effective subordinates and sufficient resources.

"Sheffield!" Joseph stated, greeting his favorite familiar as she entered his chamber. "How is our creation? Is it going well?"

The purple-clad lady with long, dark hair knelt before him, not daring to look up at her lord. "It is well, my King. The mages are working around the clock to have it restored. Research on the latest magical artifacts are providing mixed results as to potential power sources, however…"

King Joseph grinned. "And my favorite one? Has it shown any signs of utility? I do love that gem. If it proves to be less useful than anticipated, I might have a nice scepter made from it."

"It is one of the few relics providing favorable results, my liege," Sheffield began, standing up but keeping her head bowed. "Using various tethering spells, it provides seemingly unlimited power, unlike the fire stones stolen from the elves. It baffles even the head artificer, who states that it's maximum has yet to be reached. They have been unable to find a method of replicating it, however…"

"Fantastic! And how is our wonderful niece? Doing well, I presume?" The sarcasm dripping from the man’s voice was almost tangible.

"She is… adapting to her new circumstances. Shocked at her impending doom, no doubt. The potion is coming along quite well, I might add. It might even be available ahead of schedule."

"Good," Joseph stated bluntly, standing up from his throne. Taking Sheffield by the shoulder, he strode out to the balcony at the far end of his throne room, stopping at the outer handrail to admire the view of his city below. "To think that our domain will extend beyond these borders someday! I think it would have truly thrilled me, back in the day."

"I think it will thrill you when we achieve it, Master Joseph," Sheffield stated, staring at the blue-haired man and his kingly robes. "I feel what you seek is a suitable opponent. Is that why you seek your fellow Void mages?"

Joseph chuckled to himself, his powerful body shaking with each breath. "Perhaps, my dear Sheffield. There is more to it, of course. But that will come in due time. For now, we focus on the task at hand. We must not overburden ourselves with lofty goals; one at a time will do."

"Very well. Is there any other way I can be of service at this moment?" the purple-haired lady asked. She seemed slightly fidgety, as if she were anticipating something.

"No… Well, perhaps you can go check on our void mage in Tristain," Joseph offered, looking Sheffield in the eye. "Make sure she's headed in the right direction. I have a good feeling she will be headed our way quite soon."

Sheffield nodded in acknowledgement before stepping back into the throne room. "I will return shortly. Should I be capable of further service, please do inform me."

King Joseph waved Sheffield away, returning his gaze to the bustling city below. "I anticipate your arrival, Void Mage! May we see who is stronger..."

* * *

 

Within twenty minutes, Scarron had successfully collected a wagon, a team of horses, and all of the necessary supplies for the trip. "Just head west out of town, and you'll be there within a day of walking. The town you’re headed for isn't far from the border, situated around the palace of Alhambra," Scarron mentioned, pressing a map and compass into Saito's hands.

"Are you sure about this, Tails?" the boy asked, looking over the map. "If I remember right, the airship is tied down on the east end of town, not too far from the castle… There's going to be a lot of back-tracking to find us, and you might get lost or have to dodge a lot of patrols."

Tails looked over the map for a moment before nodding in recognition. "Yeah, looks like it. But hey, I have my rocket shoes. At full tilt, I'd imagine I could get around the edge of town before you guys get too far away. Aren't you going to change into your disguise?"

"I'm not changing here! Louise and the other girls are outside in the hallway changing, and I'm not changing in front of the others here," Saito replied, jokingly whacking Tails over the head with the map. "Speaking of which, what kind of costumes do they have? Mine look like some sort of homeless person's rags…"

"Just wait and see!" Scarron cried, his eyes gleaming. It was awkward to watch the grown man attempt to contain his joy, writhing like a little child waiting for the bathroom. "I don't think people get any weirder than this…" Tails thought to himself, diverting his attention from the psycho to a chess battle ensuing between two waiting students. Some of the students let out a collective gasp as the white player made an important move, declaring "checkmate!"

Amidst the din of the celebrating students, the sound of an opening door caught Tails' attention. One by one, Montmorency, Tiffania and Kirche filed in, scantily clad in "suggestive" dancer's outfits, while Louise brought up the rear in a bartender's outfit. A whistle echoed through Tails' mind, reminding him that Ring was watching the events through his eyes. "I don't think they could show much more skin if they tried," Ring commented. "I'm pretty sure the average heartbeat in this room raised a couple notches, to say the least."

"What the…?! Mr. Scarron, you can't be serious!" Colbert yelled, shocked that he had dared to dress his students in such an indecent manner. "They could easily catch colds, or get hurt without protective clothes! And, to be frank, it's simply inappropriate. Do you not have any other disguises that could work?"

"No, no, this is PERFECT! A traveling entourage simply MUST have dancers!" the flamboyant man man exclaimed, gesturing to the young ladies. "These are as good as it gets! Now, the boy's turn. Naturally, they won't be as beautiful, shall we say, but they will be fitting."

Saito, Malicorne and Guiche walked over to a chest in the corner of the room to collect their outfits, unfolding them to take a look. Malicorne froze in place upon holding up his clown outfit, tears of shame welling in his eyes. "You guys are too mean…" he whimpered to himself.

"We'll borrow one of the side rooms to change so you guys can head out. No need to stun the ladies with our beauty just yet!" Guiche joked, stepping out into the hallway. After a bit of consolation, Saito managed to convince Malicorne to go change, shutting the door behind the two.

"I don't think blondie has the balls to seriously win a lady. In more ways than one, if you know what I mean…" Ring broadcasted into Tails' mind.

Tails inwardly groaned. "Ring, you dirty little… don't you ever understand what 'keep it to yourself' means?" he thought, shaking his head in disgust. "I don't think I'm ever going to get that out of my head. Rather, I don't think you'd let me."

"Alright, students!" Colbert called, standing next to the door. "Pack up your mess. We're moving out!"


	78. Season 3 Chapter 19

The group of students filed one by one through the dark alleyways behind Tails as he scouted ahead, peeping his head out into the sparsely-populated streets to check for guards. Whenever it was time to cross a major street, the group of students huddled up around Tails to obscure him from view, calmly crossing over to the next alley before taking off again.

"I can't believe this is actually working," Tails thought. "This feels like some cheesy tactic out of a comic book or something…"

"People aren't as smart as you give them credit for. With Colbert near the front, it probably looks like some school field trip to the civilians," Ring responded.

Tails pressed forward out of the group of students, listening closely for any footsteps in the alley in front of him with Ring to confirm by telepathy. Satisfied that Ring reported a lack of visitors, the group pressed on, hopping from alley to alley as they made their way through the city. It wasn't long until the group made it to the edge of town, with only a fifty-yard-thick grove of trees standing between them and the Ostland, with the castle behind it.

Professor Colbert grabbed Tails by the shoulder and pulled him back into cover in the alleyway before addressing the group. "Alright. Before we begin, I need to assign positions so that we can get off the ground as soon as possible. Gimli, take two friends with you, as you are assigned to boilers," he stated, nodding to the green-haired boy. "Reynald will help me with the controls up top. Everyone else is assigned to defense, but no offensive spells if we run into attackers. Remember the defensive spells I taught you. As soon as Miles begins to dispose of the cables, everyone assigned to defense will need to remove them from the deck before we can take off. Understood?"

The students nodded back solemnly, determination in their eyes. "Good luck, Tails! Knights of Ordine all the way!" Renald whispered.

Tails blushed a little before getting serious, drawing Ring and extending him forward to the center of the group. "Alright Ring, how many guards and where?"

"Uhh… Looks like a pair of guards on the ramp up to some cargo hatch halfway down the ship, and a guard on each mount for the ropes with an additional guard on the front and back ends," he summed up, the metallic clank of his mouthpiece filling Tails' ears. "Twelve total, all armed with the usual castle armory gear. They're all pretty bored and distracted."

"Shouldn't be too hard. All I need to do is hold them off for you guys to board after cutting the ropes, and then get onboard with you guys. Then when you get going, I'll hop off and meet up with Saito."

Colbert nodded. "We'll wait in the trees until you begin. Do take care."

The group slowly made their way to the treeline, working through the trees to avoid the attention of the guards. As soon as the group took position at the far treeline of the grove, Tails started a silent countdown with his hands.

"Three… Two… One… Here we go!" Tails counted, bringing up his T-Buster. A quick low-voltage shot disabled the first guard, bringing him to his knees in convulsions. Thankfully, the man was knocked out faster than he could scream, keeping the other guards unaware as Tails rushed to the lower hull of the airship. He peeked around the corner to take a look at his true opponent; the massive chain and interwoven cables tying down the ship, accompanied by guards. Four large chains bigger than he could wrap his hands around were attached to a stake in the ground, as well as many additional woven ropes wrapped around the chains.

"Shouldn't be a problem," he thought to himself, switching over to plasma-cutter mode. He looked back at the students in the trees and held up a hand, telling them to wait. He could see they were getting fidgety, ready to rush at a moment's notice. With a deep breath, he rounded the corner to the left side of the ship and began silently sprinting down the side of the hull toward the first guard and chain. The thin laser blade cut through the cable effortlessly, releasing the tension the chain was under. The long end of the cut whipped forward, catching the half-asleep guard in the back of the head and knocking him clean off his feet. Tails kept sprinting at the now-aware guards, launching into the air as his tails spun up to get out of their halberd’s reach. He continued to make his way down the length of the ship in air, cutting each chain with a single swipe.

The students had begun to flood out of the forest, making a beeline for the wooden loading ramp. Once the final chain was cut, Tails dropped to the ground and quickly eliminated the guards with stun pulses from his arm cannon to clear a path for the onrush of students.

"Quickly!" professor Colbert cried. "Don't touch the guards, and take your positions!"

The students filed onto the ship as Tails and Colbert took positions on the chain-pulley mechanism to raise the ramp. Guards rounded the ship from the opposite side of the hull, yelling furiously for the intruders to halt as they sprinted to reach the rising ramp. The ramp slammed shut with a loud bang, followed by the metal-on-metal clicks as Colbert sealed many clasps and cross-bars to hold the door shut.

"Alright, Miles, let's get started!" the professor called back as he took off for the control room. Tails quickly chased after him, a grin on his face.

"I had Gimli work the boilers after we started, so he should already be experienced in the task," professor Colbert continued. "If the students on the upper deck are having any issues removing the chains, I'd appreciate it if you would help them."

The two made their way through the halls to the control room, where Reynald was already waiting. Several students were visible on the long decks, using levitation spells to remove the heavy chains that had crushed sections of the side railing from the weight. Colbert walked over to what appeared to be several tubes mounted to the far-right end of the control room and lifted a metal cap on the end of one of the pipes.

"Boiler room, are you ready to go? Please respond," the man spoke into the tube. Some tinny,  muffled speech came through that Tails couldn't quite make out, but  Colbert stepped away from the tube and gave the fox and student a thumbs-up. He walked over to the controls and adjusted various steam-routing levers to engage the turbines, filling the air with a deafening roar as the turbines spooled up. Just over the edge of the upper deck, Tails could make out some of the remaining guards slipping into the trees back by the castle, dragging their unconscious fellow soldiers to safety.

"Let's hope they take the bait," he thought aloud, watching the glint of silvery armor through the trees as the unit disappeared from sight.

* * *

 

The throne-room door burst open, startling Henrietta out of her solemn mental  focus. A group of soldiers barged in, giving a rushed bow before frantically relaying their information.

"Please, slow down a moment," Henrietta stated. "Were there any noticeable figures aboard? A blue-jacketed boy or a yellow human-like fox creature?"

"It was hard to tell among the students if the blue-jacket boy was there, but there were several confirmed sightings of the yellow fox," a single soldier replied, stepping forward. "Their last known course had them headed toward Germania, though… Or the Academy, I suppose."

Henrietta rose from her chair and addressed the guards by name, bringing them to attention. "They plan to use Germania as a buffer between us and their passage into Gallia. Send for the Griffon Knights at once! They must be intercepted before they cross the border. Have Agnes and her knights follow on horseback to secure their landing."

"Yes, your Majesty!" the guards replied. They turned to the door and sprinted down the hall, slamming the door behind them.

Henrietta took a seat in her throne, watching the sun's impossibly slow arc across the sky. "Oh, Louise…Miles… Saito… What have you done?"

* * *

 

"Alright, Miles. I think we are all good here. I wish you the best of luck in retrieving Miss Tabitha," Colbert stated. The professor stepped forward to give Tails a farewell handshake, watching him closely. "Do come back in one piece, alright? I doubt you'll be so lucky if you die again."

Tails nodded, giving the staff-toting scholar a reassuring grin. "No chance of that! Thanks again for all of your help. This wouldn't have been possible without you. Anyways, I'm outta here."

Breaking free of Colbert's firm grip, he took off from the ship’s control room, jogging through the hall and down a flight of stairs to get to the upper deck. The vicious wind buffeted Tails, forcing him to hold tight to the airship’s railing to keep from losing his footing. Pulling himself along the ship’s length by the railing, he took one quick look at the closest turbine, judging the speed of the wind and the angle of the fall. Satisfied that he was under no threat of being thrown into the turbine or wing, he gave a final wave at the control room before hopping over the railing, plummeting from the edge of the ship like a falling stone. The roar of the propellers faded from his ears, replaced by the howling wind as he free-fell to the forest below. A quick burst of his tails and rocket shoes brought him to a rapid halt just feet above the ground, rustling the leaves and sticks below him.

"Alright, let's see…" he thought to himself, bringing up his wristcomm. He had been watching an onboard compass on the Ostland to chart their trajectory, so he could now use the wristcomm's internal compass function to return to town.

"Partner, get down!" Ring interrupted, spurring Tails into action. He ducked behind a nearby bush, listening intently. While the rustling of leaves took precedence on the soundscape, he could hear a new sound coming closer at a quick pace. Suddenly, the ground rumbled as a horde of horseback riders dashed through the woods at a full gallop not five feet from where he hid.

"That was Agnès, bro," Ring stated in Tails' mind. "If they catch Mr. Colbert, he's a goner for sure."

"Are you sure?" Tails replied. "I highly doubt they'll catch him on horseback, especially in the woods."

"Yeah, maybe Agnès won't, but those guys will. Look up."

Tails shielded his eyes as he looked to the sky, catching glimpses of fast-moving streaks in the sky. "Griffon knights, accelerated by their rider's wind magic," Ring stated. "I'm giving the Ostland a forty percent chance to outrun them, if they don't let up on the steam in the slightest."

"Dang, the odds are really that low? The Ostland must've been doing some hundred-and-fifty knots at cruising speed. I'm surprised the riders can stay on their mounts at that those speeds," Tails thought, looking back to his wristcomm as he rose to his feet.

"The basics of Griffon riding teach them how to use magic to distort air around the rider so they aren't pushed off at magic-accelerated speed. Speaking of speed, shouldn't you get going?"

Tails nodded. "Yup. Just getting my bearing, here… Alright, four point five degrees south of west should put us just south of town, in the farm fields. We can get airborne from there and get new bearings. I hope Saito and the others are out by now…"

The jets of the fox’s rocket shoes roared to life with a tap of his wristcomm. With a quick spool-up of his tails, he shot off into the woods, rushing to catch up with Saito and the others.


	79. Season 3 Chapter 20

"Hey, Saito," Malicorne called from the rear of the wagon. "Do you think Tails is alright? I mean, we're almost at the border, and it's getting dark. I think he would have found us by now if something hadn't happened. Should we go back for him?"

"No way. I'm sure Tails is fine," Saito replied, giving the reins a light shake to spur the horses on. "He can handle himself pretty well, and I'm sure he has some weird technology to help, knowing him. It won't be much longer, I'm sure…"

"I hope so… He's the one with the plan, right?" Louise asked, looking up from her lap in the back of the wagon. The Black Arms laser saber that Tails had left her sat in her lap, having packed it before leaving. "What if he doesn't show up? We keep going, right?"

Derflinger popped out of his sheath on Saito's back, his mouthpiece softly rattling. "Of course we keep going! It's not like stopping's going to help Tabitha. Not that it bothers me, she's YOUR friend. I'm just along for the ride, ya' know?"

Montmorency pointed an accusative finger at the talking sword. "You know darn well that she's your friend too, Derf. How can you say things like that?!"

"Don't worry!" Tiffania added. "I'm sure Miles is fine, and we'll get Tabitha back in no time! Just wait, he'll come. I'm sure of it."

Suddenly, Guiche barged to the front, watching something in the distance. "Guys, there's a guard unit ahead! They're already at the border!" he exclaimed.

Saito squinted and shielded his eyes from the glint of the remaining sliver of the sun poking up over the horizon, focusing toward the distant road. Sure enough, a group of soldiers stood waiting, surrounded by standing torches waiting to be lit.

"Alright, everyone. Stay calm and we'll be through in no time!" Guiche stated, taking a seat on the driver’s bench at the front of the wagon next to Saito. Derflinger slid back into his sheath as everyone took their places in the wagon, fiddling with some object or other. Louise quickly slipped the laser-saber back into her dress pocket, holding it with her hand in her sleeves to prevent activating it.

"Whoa, there! Stop up here, please!" one of the guards called to the wagon. With a little effort controlling the horse, Saito drew the lead horses to a stop as Guiche had instructed him earlier.

The guard that had called out walked up to one of the horses and stroked its muzzle before facing Saito. "We're going to need you to get everyone out of the wagon for an inspection, if it's not too much of a hassle."

"Yes sir," Saito stated, hopping down from the driver's seat. All of the students filed out of the rear of the wagon, lining up shoulder-to-shoulder as the soldiers instructed them. One soldier, his chest armor more decorated than the others, walked up and down the line as he inspected each person individually. "Carrying any weapons other than this man's sword?" he asked, nodding toward Saito.

"We have a few blunt juggling knives in the back of the wagon, sir," Guiche replied, working hard to keep up the act. The soldier nodded, giving the group a smile. "Well, then it shouldn't be a problem if we check things in the wagon, correct? Safety, you understand. Some renegades on the loose we need to catch."

"Yes sir, feel free," Saito responded. The group waited patiently as the soldiers swarmed over their meager belongings, trying to contain their nervousness. "If any of them left even so much as a wand or magic item, we're screwed," Saito thought to himself.

After a minute of pure, uncomfortable anxiety, the soldiers finally backed down from their search. "All clear, captain," one of the searchers stated, hopping out of the wagon.

"Sorry again for the troubles, folks," the captain stated once more. "We hope you have a safe journey."

Saito nodded and smiled in appreciation. "Thanks! We might need it if the weather turns bad," he stated. Once everyone else was loaded up, Saito walked around to the driver's seat and picked up the reins, giving them a light flick to get the horses moving at a slow trot.

When the guards were finally out of earshot, the group let out a collective sigh of relief. "Thank Brimir that that's over," Malicorne stated. "I don't think I could take much more stress, or I'd crack and get us caught…"

Guiche patted Malicorne on the back. "You did well, Malicorne. It was stressful for all of us, but I'm quite sure you did better than any of us would have, what with your clothes and all. At least they didn't ask you to juggle or anything."

"Yeah... I should probably practice, though, if I'm going to be of any use when we get there," Malicorne added. "So, what IS the act when we get there?"

Guiche stood up in the wagon and cleared his throat, as if he were going to give a speech. "If Miles doesn't come back, our plan is to find out where Tabitha is and sneak in at night. When we get her, we keep her hidden as we slip past the guards, pretending to be on our way to our next performance. Simple!"

"Riiight…" Montmorency added sarcastically. "Do you REALLY think that the guards will just tell us where she is? And that's assuming they even know, and that it's not some top-secret thing not known by the typical street guard. Even then, what do we do if we actually have to perform at Alhambra? We don't know anything other than basic ballroom dancing, and it's not as if we are exactly equipped to sneak into a castle."

"Montmorency, my dear, all you need is trust in the plan and we're golden!" Guiche explained. Clearly unsatisfied with the response, Montmorency proceeded to ignore the rest of his stupid ranting. The rest of the group followed suit, waiting patiently for him to get the memo.

A slight fluttering noise began to fill the air, but no one seemed to notice until the canvas tarp of the wagon roof shuddered under impact, causing everyone to jump in fright. A familiar fuzzy face popped down from the roof, hanging upside-down from the back of the wagon.

"So, what'd I miss?" Tails asked jokingly.

* * *

 

"Those flying idiots better be close to bringing down that damn ship," Agnès growled. The Griffon Knight's attacks for the past ten minutes had yielded no significant results, as far as she could tell. Despite minor structural damage, the enemy airship was puttering along at quite a pace in the distance, with the Griffon Squad keeping close on its tail. Agnès could tell her horse was starting to tire – the creature's gallop was becoming more uneven, its breathing more labored than earlier.

"Ma'am, the airship is slowing down! The Griffon knights did it!" one of the Gunpowder Squadron members yelled. Agnès looked up from her horse to see that the airship was indeed slowing down. Several of the Griffon knights that had been trailing the airship now boarded, disappearing from view. The Gunpowder Squadron slowly gained on the airship until they were able to come to a full stop just beneath the behemoth craft in an open field. Slowly, the airship lowered to the ground under some magical force, shaking the ground with a landing remarkably smooth for its size. A wooden ramp doorway lowered down from the side of the craft, revealing the waiting passengers. Agnès watched closely as students filed slowly out of the aircraft, looking for any signs of the yellow fox she knew too well.

"Ah, Miss Agnès! A surprise, seeing you again."

Agnès focused at the top of the ramp, honing in on the source of that dreaded voice. As if in another one of her bad dreams, that bald-headed murderer she feared most stood before her once more, silently mocking her with his existence. She leaped down from her horse and drew her sword, charging up the ramp past the students. A quick elbow jab sent the bald man sprawling to the ground, vitals exposed for a quick stab of her rapier.

"You're supposed to be dead, you sonovabitch!" she cried in exasperation. Her hands twitched with rage, desperate to plunge the pointed steel into the man's heart, but her sword tip never left the man's neck.

"Agnes, please don't kill professor Colbert!" a female student cried out behind Agnès, but the voice was distant and went unheard. Agnès' mind was filled with thoughts, memories of this man. "He's cost me everything I know and love!" she thought, staring deep into the eyes of the enemy before her. "But… He saved me when I was in certain doom. Twice, in fact… But that doesn't make up for burning my village!"

Agnès came to a snap decision. She sheathed her sword, much to Colbert's relief, but followed up with a quick stomp of her heel to the man's gut. The professor grunted in pain as he tried to bring himself to his feet, eyes closed. "That's for my village, you monster. Be glad I'm sparing you, for all the pain you've caused me. Now, where are Miles and Saito?"

"I'm sorry, but the people you are looking for are headed for another castle," professor Colbert stated with a grin. "I'm sure you can guess which. They should be over the border by now, if our timing is right."

Agnès let out a sigh before turning to her troops. "Alright ladies, rally up! We need to get back to the castle and relay info to the Queen. We may have a war on our hands, no thanks to these jerks. Let's move!"

* * *

 

Tabitha shuffled down the hall in her familiar slippers, careful not to disturb the silence of the cavernous mansion. She crept through the partially-open door of her mother's room and took a seat on her usual chair. She had gotten into the habit of reading to her mother each evening, carefully selecting novels that she thought her mother would enjoy. Tonight, however, she had decided to revisit the tale of Ivaldi, her favorite novel.

"Mother, I've brough you a novel I think you might like," Tabitha whispered. "It's a favorite of mine. You might remember it."

The elderly-looking blue-haired lady laid in motionless slumber, incapable of responding to Tabitha's statements. The bespectacled girl adjusted her glasses and began to read, waiting for some reaction from her mother…

"You know she probably can't hear you, right?" a voice interrupted. Tabitha looked up from the novel to see Vitartial leaning against the doorframe, watching her with disinterested eyes. "The potion does a remarkably good job at incapacitating it's victim in the long term. I hardly doubt she knows the meanings of the words she mumbles when she's awake. Like she's speaking out of repetition from before…"

"What do you want?" Tabitha asked coldly, returning her gaze to the book.

Vitartial shrugged. "I just wanted to let you know that the potion is coming along better than expected. Estimates are shortened to have the potion completed by tomorrow evening, depending on how many snack breaks I take. I'll see if I can get permission to administer it in your sleep, so you at least end the day with good dreams. The dragon, however, isn't looking so promising. If they can't tame her within a few days of you being drugged, they'll be putting her down. A shame, for such a fine creature…"

Tabitha's gaze never left the book as she silently waited for the elf-man to leave. After what seemed like an eternity, the elf finally stepped away, shutting the door behind him with a soft click of the latch. "Last day…" she thought to herself, before breaking down into silent tears once more.


	80. Season 3 Chapter 21

The warm morning sunlight shined bright in Tails' eyes in the morning as he stood at the treeline of the woods, watching the sunrise over a field not far from their camp. "Today's the day, Derf. We're getting Tabitha back," he stated resolutely.

"You betcha, bro," Ring replied out loud. "Better go help clean up the camp, though, if you want to get out of here sooner."

"I suppose so. Too bad I couldn't build another robotic pet like T-Pup before coming here. I would've trained him to do stuff like that." Tails turned back to the woods, making his way through the trees to where the group had set up camp earlier. Saito was already awake, packing up some of the cooking supplies that had been washed out the night before. "Morning, Tails," he whispered, careful not to disturb the others.

The fox nodded silently as he assisted in cleaning up. The two waited until everything other than the sleeping mats had been packed before waking up the others, gently shaking them awake.

"hnnnnng…nooo, five more minutes pleeease…" Guiche mumbled, rolling onto his side in an attempt to escape Tails' hand. Tails bent over and shook him some more, but Guiche refused to get up.

Tails brought up his T-Buster and extracted the waiting Power Ring from the storage slot, staring fondly at the glowing golden circle. "Alright, Guiche, if you don't get up, we do this the hard way," he replied, putting away his T-Buster. He activated the Power Ring, and with a quick surge of speed, rolled up Guiche's sleeping mat around him and hefted the boy over his shoulder. Despite Guiche's now-screaming protests, he casually chucked the blanket-ensconced boy in the back of the wagon, watching the him fly to his feet in rage the moment he freed himself.

"You could have severely hurt me doing that!" Guiche cried, pointing an accusative finger at Tails. The group laughed at the furious boy, waiting patiently for him to calm down before loading the last of the campsite supplies into the back of the wagon and piling in.

"Alright, Miles, what's the plan?" Montmorency asked, shivering under her blanket as the wagon began to roll along. "I sure hope the first thing we get are clothes. These uniforms suck, if you ask me."

Tails shrugged. "Not much we can do about that at the moment. As to the plan, I've got a rough idea. We are going to set up a performance in the evening, something flashy that will draw off the guards. Perhaps one of you could speak with the captain of the guard or something to arrange for that?"

Kirche smirked. "That'll be easy, I'd imagine. And then?"

"Next, we serve drinks. Lots of them. Montmorency, you brought your potion-making stuff, right?"

"Yeah, I did," Montmorency said, pointing to her personal bag. "I didn't bring many advanced ingredients, though. Not enough space."

"Alright, that's fine," Tails stated. "We'll restock in town. We'll need you to create a lot of sleeping potions of some sort, and spike the drinks with it. If we can knock out the guards, an assault on the compound will be much easier. Since I can't be a part of the event, I'll try to sneak into the castle while you do your stuff and wait for you guys to knock them all out cold. When you do, secure the front of the building and send Saito inside to help me if there are too many people inside. Hopefully, I'll be able to locate Tabitha before you guys get involved, which will speed things up a bit."

The group nodded in understanding. "Sounds like a firm plan, Tails," Malicorne stated. "I hope everything goes as smooth as you said, though… It sounds like a lot can go wrong."

Saito shrugged from the driver's seat. "Plans always have more failure points than you want. It's the best we can hope for without any specific knowledge of the town or castle itself. What about Sylphid?"

"Shit. Yeah, there's her to worry about, too…" Tails thought, rubbing his forehead. "Alright, then here's what we'll do," Tails replied aloud. "I'll find the location of both of them and meet you guys at the entrance. We'll split up into two groups, one to go fetch Sylphid and one to get Tabitha. We'll ditch all the unnecessary gear like the wagon and make an escape on Sylphid if need be."

"Sounds good," Louise mumbled, still half-asleep. "Wake me when we get there…"

* * *

 

The carriage rumbled on in relative silence for the better part of six hours, only stopping twice to water the horses at a nearby stream. The forest seemed to stretch on for ages as the wagon crawled along the dirt road through the woods, with nothing but endless trees in sight. Finally, the path opened up into a field, with the large town of Alhambra spread out before them. The ornate, square-ish palace that overlooked the town from lay on a hillside to the west, towering over the sprawl of two-story homes and shops in front of it.

"About time!" Saito stated, letting out a yawn. "Guiche, come take over the reins for a bit. I'm going to fall asleep mid-event if I don't take a nap."

The two boys switched places at the driver's seat, allowing Saito to climb into the back and lay down on the wooden floor at Tails' feet. "You might want to get out of here soon," Saito said before shutting his eyes.

"Yeah, I'll bail just before town and go hide on a rooftop somewhere until I can sneak in," Tails replied, tying a blanket around his neck like a cloak. "It probably won't be until you get started with the performance, though. Too many guards on the grounds if I go early, no doubt."

Saito was fast asleep by the time Tails was set, so he didn't bother waking him up as the wagon approached the edge of town. "Alright, guys. I'll catch you on the other side, I guess," he stated. The group bid him farewell as he hopped out of the back of the wagon, taking cover in one of the few bushes by the edge of the road. As the wagon reached the first buildings at the edge of town, a few guards popped out of the buildings and alleys nearby, ready to stop the wagon. From what Tails could see, the guards were pretty excited to have a circus in town, so they waved the wagon in rather quickly. He waited for a few moments for the guards to return to their posts before making his way up the road, walking in a little ditch off to the side.

"Seems like they just catch people coming into town, rather than looking for people from afar," Tails thought to himself as he made it to the wall of the first building. "Can you confirm that, Ring?"

"Looks about right. They're all sitting around a couple tables on either side of the road, playing cards," Ring replied.

"Good, that makes things easy," Tails muttered to himself. He rolled his brown cloak up over his shoulders and took to the air, clearing the edge of the roof and landing lightly. He rolled his cloak back down and walked over to the edge of the building, taking a quick observation. A ways down the road, he could spot the wagon making it's way around a corner onto some larger street.

"I suppose I should set up camp nearby wherever they stop," Tails muttered to himself. With a short run-up, he began leaping over the narrow alleyways, rolling up his cloak to use his tails when he needed to clear a larger alley.

After several minutes of roof-hopping, he finally came to a rest on top of the building next to the alley that the wagon was stored in, just off to the side of a large stone plaza. He could see the group three stories below, unpacking some basics into barrels they acquired from somewhere on their way into town.

"Pssst, Saito!" Tails whispered down, catching the group's attention. "I'm going to be asleep up here until it's time. Make sure to get Montmorency's stuff!"

Saito replied with a silent thumbs-up. Reassured, Tails pulled back over the edge of the building and laid back against a small storage box left on the roof. Untying his blanket-cloak into a nice bundled roll, he laid back and let the warm mid-day sun carry him to sleep.

* * *

 

"Alright, guys, you heard him," Saito stated to the group. "Kirche, go with Tiffania and try to arrange the event. Make sure you don't blow your cover."

Kirche nodded. "Be back in a bit!" she replied, walking off with Tiffania in tow. From the back of the wagon, Montmorency removed her personal bag and began unpacking her tools. "…yeah, this should do," she thought aloud.

"What's that?" Louise asked, looking over Montmorency's stuff. "We need to go find an apothecary for supplies, right?"

Montmorency nodded. "Yeah, but it's not as bad as I thought, since I remembered I brought this!" she said, holding up a clump of foul-smelling dried herbs. "Anyways, I was just doing some math about how much time I would need to make it all, but I remembered a few combining spells Mrs. Cheveruse taught us a while back. Should save me some time on the mortar and pestle, as well as mixing stuff."

"Well, where would this apothecary be?" Saito asked.

"Let's see… Not too far from here. I saw it on the way in. About a ten-minute walk, I'd guess," she replied.

"Right. That shouldn't be too bad. Guiche can go with you while I wait for Kirche and start setting up if they get back."

Guiche sprung up from his resting place at the sound of his name. "I'd be glad to!" He took Montmorency by the arm and whisked her out of the alley without so much as a glance back.

"I have a feeling they'll be a while," Saito thought to himself. He looked back over the unpacked stage-building supplies that Scarron had shipped them with, finding that Malicorne had disappeared off somewhere on his own accord. Louise was seated on a crate in the back, once again staring at the black laser-saber in her cloth-covered hands.

"Louise, you OK? You haven't spoken much this whole trip," Saito asked, taking a seat on the wagon wheel opposite her.

"Yeah, I'm ok, I suppose… Just worried, that's all," she replied, looking up and locking eyes with Saito.

Saito nodded and gave her a smile. "Hey, Tabitha'll be alright. I'm sure she's fine, and we'll be getting her out soon."

"No, that's not it," Louise replied, shaking her head. "We turned in our cloaks, defied the Queen. We're not nobles anymore! I don't think I could face my parents like this... Queen Henrietta must be furious, so she probably won't help us-"

Saito cut her short with a hug. "Come on, Louise! That doesn't change a thing, and you know it. I'm sure Henrietta was just mad because she was worried about us. About you. And, honestly, I could always just beat up your father's butlers again if he becomes a problem," he added with a laugh. "Is that all?"

Louise nodded silently, still downcast. "…Thanks, Saito."

"Hey, you just got to stop worrying so much, alright?" Saito replied, taking a seat back on the rear left wheel of the wagon.

"Don't tell me what to do!" Louise yelled, her usual spunk returning in a flush of red in her face. A giggle from down the alleyway caught the attention of the two as Kirche stepped out from around the corner of the intersection at the back of the alley. "It's good to hear you two going at it again!" she joked, grinning at Louise.

Saito raised an eyebrow. "Did everything go well? That was really fast, wasn't it?" he asked.

"Charms of having a nice body," Kirche replied nonchalantly. "Guards let us right in, we got to the point, and the mayor was quick to agree, although he didn't seem too keen on us in particular. We're on for tonight, but he warned us of possible rain. He said he would have some men provide some party shelters for seating and the stage."

Saito gave a quick fist-pump at his success. "Perfect! Great job, Kirche. You too, Tiffania."

Tiffania smiled in appreciation. "Thanks, Saito. I'm not quite sure what to do once we start the show, though…"

Kirche took Tiffania aside. "We'll dance! With men, it's pretty easy. We can go practice, if you like."

Saito nodded. "I'm going to go set up some of the stage stuff. Call me if you need me, Louise."

The three parted ways, with Kirche and Tiffania heading deeper into the alleys as Saito hefted a bag of supplies over his shoulder and stepped out into the plaza. Louise sat behind, alone, focused deep in her thoughts again…

* * *

 

Tabitha sat quietly at the massive banquet table, staring coldly at her untouched plate of food. Her blue-haired uncle sat at the end of the table adjacent to her, in turn watching her with feigned interest.

King Joseph broke the silence with a polite cough. "So, Charlotte, have you enjoyed your stay so far? I made sure to have your old room made up. Good memories, I presume?"

The blue-haired girl remained unmoved by her uncle's words, cutting a small chunk from her filet mignon with the razor-sharp knife. "This man took my father's life, and now I sit next to him at his dinner table as a captive. Things aren't looking up, are they?" she thought to herself sarcastically as she took her first bite.

"Well, all well and good that you remain silent," Joseph continued. "Maybe it will mean you will have less to say when you lose your wits. It should be done by tonight, and administered by tomorrow morning." He took a large bite of steak, savoring the tart yet slightly sweet pomegranate glaze. "This is one of my favorite dishes. Imported fruit from the elvish lands to the south, impossible to grow here unfortunately. My head chef has gotten quite good at making this, so I hope you enjoy. I figured we should treat you with something special for your last day."

Tabitha continued to chew on the same blob of ground meat, unable to swallow for some reason. "What did this man ever see in a life like this?" she thought, looking through a nearby window. The sun would have been setting right about now, if it weren't for the mass of clouds that had rolled in over Alhambra during the last few hours. "Is this what my father would have been like? Some crazed, power-hungry old man? No… I doubt it."

Tabitha forced down the chunk of steak she'd been mulling over and pushed back her plate. "I'd like to return to my mother's room, please," she stated quietly, unwilling to grace the man with her gaze.

Joseph shrugged with a sly grin. "Whatever suits you, my dear Charlotte. Vitartial, if you would be so kind, would you please accompany our guest back to her mother's side?"

The elf stepped forward, seemingly materializing out of the shadows behind an open door. "Very well, master Joseph. Come, Miss Charlotte."

Tabitha walked over to the waiting elf and followed him out the door, leaving behind the banquet hall. The two walked silently through the empty halls of the manor, with Tabitha distracting her mind by observing every passing suit of decorational armor or portrait. The two finally reached the familiar door, which Vitartial opened to allow Tabitha in. She stepped inside and took a seat in the chair at her mother's bedside, watching over the elderly-looking woman once more.

"By the way," Vitartial stated, "I'm not sure if it interests you, but I heard from one of the mayor's men that a performing group is in town. Some kind of dancing act, I presume. If you would like to go, I can give you permission."

Tabitha shook her head, picking up Andersen's Fairy Tales from beside her chair. "I'd like to spend the night here," she stated.

Vitartial nodded. "That's fine. I'll be by when you wake up. Goodnight, princess."

The door shut with a soft click as Tabitha began to bury herself deep into the Tin Soldier, rereading each and every detail. "Goodnight… to think that those might be the last words I hear. How... fitting?" she thought. "No, snap out of it. Don't give them your final thoughts. Focus on mother. Mother and Sylphid… I can't even save my own Familiar. Neither of them. What kind of knight am I?"

The sound of silence was suddenly broken by the soft patter of rain on the window, drawing Tabitha away from her thoughts. A sense of dread began to well up in her chest as a single tear rolled down her face, falling to the pages of her book.

* * *

 

Joseph grinned at the thought that passed through his mind. "Sheffield, my dear, are the guards in place? I'd imagine our friends will be paying a visit soon. Within a few days, I'd say."

"Yes, master Joseph. One in each room, should they attempt a break-in. They'll wait as long as you order them to," Sheffield replied, kneeling before her king and master.

"Good," Joseph stated, placing a hand on Sheffield's head. "Let them enjoy my little fun-house for a while. The sweeter the bait, the more they push themselves. And my dear, we have the sweetest bait in the world, and the highest-quality trap…"


	81. Season 3 Chapter 22

_There were once five-and-twenty tin soldiers… All the soldiers looked exactly alike except one… But just you see, he'll be the remarkable one._

Tails woke to the feeling of dampness, followed by a few solitary drops of water on his face. His eyes first took in grey sky above, the fine lines of the clouds blurred by millions of falling droplets. The rain was slowly picking up, spurring him to get up and unroll his blanket, tying it around his neck once more. A quick peek over the edge of the building revealed that many of the guards were already taking their seats in the plaza underneath tarps stretched over poles, clamoring for drinks from their tables that sprawled out in front of the constructed stage, well-lit by many torches hissing in the rain. Below him, he could see Montmorency, Tiffania, Kirche, and even Louise now in their dancer's costumes, waiting for the show to begin.

"…sure this will work?" Tails could hear Louise ask quietly.

"I dunno," Montmorency replied. "The apothecary was low on one of the ingredients, so I couldn't make as much of the potion as I intended. We just need to keep them drinking and let the alcohol do the work."

"And if it doesn't?" Guiche butted in, a bit panicked. "We can't just leave them mid-show if they don't fall asleep! What if Tails needs us?"

Malicorne tapped Guiche on the shoulder. "It will be fine, I'm sure. We can always send Saito and tell the people he got sick or something," he said.

Tails nodded. "That'll work just fine," he thought to himself. "Ring, make sure to keep contact with Saito when I get going, alright?"

"Sure thing," Ring replied mentally. "Do you know how you're going to get in?"

'They never would expect an attack from above. I can fly to the roof and get in through a skylight or roof balcony access, I'm sure," Tails thought.

_…and one that no eye could miss was a marvelous castle of cardboard. It had little windows through which you could look right inside it. And in front of the castle were miniature trees around a little mirror supposed to represent a lake. The wax swans that swam on its surface were reflected in the mirror. All this was very pretty…_

Tails strained to see the mansion in the distance from his rooftop through the steady rain, the defined and picturesque building blurred by the falling drops. "It's almost time," Ring interrupted. "Most of the guards are here, at least from what I can tell. This rain reduces my range a bit for some reason… though scanning thousands of city people for stray guards isn't easy to begin with."

"Don't worry about it," Tails thought, his mind elsewhere. "Are the rest of the group moving yet?"

"They just stepped up on stage. Malicorne has taken over serving the alcohol, so I'd wait a few more minutes to let them get their first mugs down."

Tails retired to his crate, staring again at the far mansion in the waning grey light. A few torches were ignited on the roof, outlining the building with an orange light. "I wonder how I should try to find Tabitha. Go slow and search individual rooms, or try to capture a guard and get info from him…"

_…but prettiest of all was the little lady who stood in the open doorway of the castle. Though she was a paper doll, she wore a dress of the fluffiest gauze. A tiny blue ribbon went over her shoulder for a scarf…_

_"…_ yeah. I'll just go slow. Capturing a guard might trip some alarm. We can't risk Tabitha's safety for the sake of speed."

Music began to fill the air as Kirche and the other girls took to the stage, doing their "dance". The men were enthralled with the display, gleefully downing their mugs of ciders and mead as they enjoyed the respite from their daily work.

"Alright, I'm going. Any later and it'll be too dark to see with these clouds," Tails thought aloud. "Here we go, Tabitha!"

_…and whether the bogey did it, or there was a gust of wind, all of a sudden the window flew open and the soldier pitched out headlong from the third floor._

Tails held up his cloak and leaped from the rooftop down to the alley floor, halting himself as quietly as he could with his tails to avoid the soldier's attention. He couldn't quite stop himself fast enough while trying to be silent, and his legs were sore from the landing, but he paid it no mind. The fox picked another blanket out of the back of the wagon and, after tying it to his head as a crude hood, took off through the alleyways. Occasionally, he had to consult his wristcomm's compass to ensure he was headed the right way.

_Soon it began to rain. The drops fell faster and faster, until they came down by the bucketful._

The rain began to pick up pace, being driven by a gust that swept the rain sideways into every crevice of Tails' surroundings. The network of alleys opened into a wider street, with dark shops on either side. A few lights from the upper stories of the buildings indicated that families were dug in for the night, enjoying shelter from the penetrating rain.

_Out popped a great water rat who lived under the gutter plank._

_"Have you a passport?" said the rat. "Hand it over."_

_The soldier kept quiet and held his musket tighter. On rushed the boat, and the rat came right after it, gnashing his teeth as he called to the sticks and straws…_

"Partner, heads up. A few guards on patrol, probably on their way to the event. Coming your way."

Tails looked around frantically for some place to hide, but the streets were barren after being prepared for the storm. Before he could duck into a doorway or side alley, the two guards came into view, each carrying a torch in hand and sword on their belt.

"Just stay cool, Tails. Trust the disguise…" Tails told himself, tucking his tails as closely behind his back as he could. One of the guards called out something to him, but between the rain and cluttered state of his panicked mind, whatever the guard had said was completely unintelligible. One of the guards reached for his sword as Tails continued to approach the two, head down and lips sealed.

"Boy, where are you going at this time?" the hand-on-sword guard called, raising his torch in his other hand. "It's late, almost past curfew. With this kind of rain, you need to get inside before you get a cold, too."

Tails shook his head, not daring to raise it. "I don't have a home… I just need to find a place to lie down for the night…" he stated in a husky, faked voice.

The two guards looked at each other. "No home? You should be registered with the King's services, then. He'd take care of you. Do you have your papers?"

"No papers," Tails replied. "Father went out of work a few days ago. Couldn't pay rent on the house, drunk himself to death on a tab…"

The hand-on-sword guard looked at his partner once more before replying. "Listen, uhh… this is gonna sound like a bummer, but we gotta take you in to get you registered. It's nothing bad, just a quick prick of blood for a legal document. Keep tabs on the homeless, get them access to a bread line. Right, Marcus?"

The other guard named Marcus shot his buddy a dirty glance. "You know it's not that, man… Prick of blood my ass. I heard they murdered a few dudes that didn't go along with the papers, but if you do, you get harassed endlessly, even beaten. I can't stand the King's shit sometimes, but that law takes the cake. Not that you heard it from me…"

"Shit," Tails thought. "These people are wasting my time." He shook his head and began stumbling forward, pretending to ignore the guards.

_"Halt him! Stop him! He didn't pay his toll. He hasn't shown his passport." But the current ran stronger and stronger. The soldier could see daylight ahead where the board ended, but he also heard a roar that would frighten the bravest of us…_

"Hey, buddy, you gotta come back here. We need to take you to the King's offices!" the guard named Marcus called after Tails, but as soon as he could hear the guards coming after him, he took off into a full sprint, desperately trying to lose the guards on foot without revealing his shoes or tails. The guards tailed him for several streets, giving chase until they were not far from the mansion's main gate at the edge of town.

"Guards! Intruder headed toward castle grounds! Stop him!" one of the patrol guards called behind Tails. He launched himself through the main castle gate, barreling at full speed toward the large doors. However, the remaining reserve guards began to stream out of the mansion, the sound of their metal-armored boots clanging on the stone ringing out even over the heavy rain. Tails found himself sandwiched between two forces of guards, pikes leveled and at the ready in front and swords drawn from behind. Once the guards had fully surrounded him, a single brown-cloaked figure stepped forward into the ring.

"I see," the figure said. "You must be the one Sheffield talked about. I've heard of your strength."

"I'm sorry, do I know you?" Tails asked, looking closer at the figure. A quick observation highlighted pointed ears beneath a wide-brimmed hat, something that Tails had seen recently. "Oh, you're an elf. I haven't had many great run-ins with you guys. What do you want?"

The man let out a short laugh. "Well, for starters, I heard that you killed both of my brothers, Naedrithal and Iyveson. I suppose some sort of attempt at avenging their deaths is in order."

Tails nodded. "Naedrithal I remember. Tried to make friends with him before he tried to stab me and leave me for dead in the woods. The other… Can't put a finger on it. Sure it was me?"

"Quite. It was Iyveson's death in the assault on Gotha that got Naedrithal worked up. Nothing to do with me at all," the elf replied. "Secondly, I'm on orders not to let you pass, but I believe we can work something out. We elves don't like unnecessary bloodshed."

Tails took a ready pose, eying the guards surrounding him closely. "I like the sound of that. What do you have in mind?"

"Simple. A duel to disarm one another. As you may guess, that doesn't mean cutting each other's arms off," the man joked. "I assume you are more intelligent than that."

"I'd assume the same," Tails replied, drawing Ring. "We'll keep this simple. Begin on count of three?"

"Agreed," the elf replied. "By the way, the stakes are simple. You win, I let you in to Miss Charlotte. You lose, I take you to the King and let him have the pleasure of executing you."

Tails nodded and began to count down out loud. "Three… Two… One… Go!"

As soon as the fight began, Tails drew his T-Buster and let loose with several low-voltage charges that crackled from raindrop to raindrop, dead on the target. However, as quick as the shots were fired, the elf was faster. A quick wave of his hand erected a green, translucent barrier that absorbed five of the seven shots, deflecting the other two into guards on either side of him and incapacitating them instantly. With another wave of his hand, the elf returned the shots, giving Tails hardly any time to dodge.

_He thought of the pretty little dancer whom he'd never see again, and in his ears rang an old, old song:_

_"Farewell, farewell, O warrior brave,_

_Nobody can from Death thee save."_

One of the bolts found their mark, grazing Tails' leg. Much of the energy transferred into his body, sending him sprawling to the ground, his body twitching with painful convulsions as the electricity arced through his muscles. The instant pain of the shot sapped his strength, the adrenaline coursing through his veins barely keeping him awake through the searing sensation. "Shit, not now… Too close to fail!" he groaned as he struggled to his feet, using Ring as a support. The largest of the spasms had ended, but his right leg still twitched from the sudden confusion of electrical impulses.

"My, what a strong weapon indeed!" the elf remarked, looking at his opponent and the two fallen knights to either side of him. "A single blow resulting in nearly instant incapacitation! Very nice. Effective, yet not cruelly so. I might have to take it after we're done here."

"In your dreams, pal," Tails uttered, taking an offensive pose. He deactivated his T-Buster and readied Ring, gripping the sword with one hand on the handgrip and the other on the Power Ring mounted in the end of the blade.

"Give me a shield, Ring," Tails thought as he slowly advanced on the elf. Without responding, a blue layer of light flickered into existence around him..

"You have your own shield magic, I see! Fantastic. This should be good," the elf stated sarcastically.

With a quick wind-up, Tails threw his entire weight into a heavy swing of his scimitar toward the elf, which he simply blocked with his own emerald-colored shield once more. The sudden change in momentum of the sword coming to an instantaneous halt caused the fox to slip and fall forward on the wet cobblestone, pressing up against the elf's magical shield. He scrambled back to his feet and quickly backpedaled as the elf drew his own slender fencing saber for the first time, rolling his eyes indignantly.

"Partner, did you see that?!" Ring broadcasted into Tails' mind.

"No, what'd I miss?" Tails replied, his mind racing to find any openings.

"When you pushed up against him, your shield slipped through his."

Tails' grimace grew into a slight smirk. "Got it. It can only block one kind of object at once – physical or energy-based. That shouldn't be too hard. You remember that technique I taught you a while back, using the shield as a weapon?"

"OOooohh, I see where you're going. What's the plan?"

Tails stepped forward once more, slowly advancing on the waiting elf. "I'm going to activate this Power Ring so I can keep his shield focused on my physical attacks. You've got to do that projectile move on your own, though."

"Wait, won't that leave you exposed? I can't maintain a shield for that long without that Power Ring, too…"

"We'll cross that bridge when we get to it. Just go!"

Tails activated the Power Ring lodged in the heavy-tipped blade, allowing it to dissolve and fill his body with energy. With uncanny speed, he rushed up to the elf's green shield and began smashing away at it with all his might, dodging the stabs and swipes the elf made at him through the safety of his shield. He grit his teeth as he landed blow after blow, numbing his arm from the recoil of each sudden stop of his sword. "Damnit Ring, hurry up! I'm slamming my fist against a brick wall here!" he thought.

The elf grinned at the fox as he repeatedly bashed the shield, carelessly poking at the agitated creature with his saber. "You're clearly not very good at this, are you? Perhaps I overestimated your intel-acghk!"

Suddenly, the green shield flickered out of existence as the elf collapsed to the ground, a marble-sized hole in his leg and gut bringing him to the ground in pain as blood dyed his clothes. Tails shoved the swordpoint against the man's throat, pulling him up a bit by his collar. "Intelligence? With all due respect, I've traveled universes in machines I've built myself. I'd argue it's better than magic any day, but we're not here to discuss that, are we?" he growled, staring the man in the eye. "Where is Tabitha?"

The elf gave him a wan smile, holding up two fingers. "I'd like to ask two questions. First, what is your name? Second, how are you surviving that?" he asked, pointing at the fox's lower hip.

Tails looked down to see a puncture wound the width of the elf's slender sword, blood slowly oozing out of the open wound. He could feel the last of the energy from the Power Ring sapping from his body as it tried to heal the wound, but knew it wouldn't be enough to completely seal it. "My name's Tails, and I'm surviving that because of my Power Ring, which gives mild regenerative properties to those who can control its power," he replied bluntly. "Now, your name, location of Tabitha, and call off the guards or I electrocute them all."

The elf waved at the remaining conscious guards, who looked at each other in confusion. One by one, they returned to the barracks without saying a word, with a few dragging their fallen comrades behind them. "Now, for me. My name is Vitartial. Your 'Tabitha' is upstairs. Head inside, first right, then second left, then head left again and it'll be three doors down."

Tails nodded and dropped the elf against the wet stone, taking off into the mansion ahead.

_…It was darker than under the gutter-plank and it was so cramped, but the tin soldier still was staunch. He lay there full length, soldier fashion, with musket to shoulder._

As the Power Ring's energy finally faded, Tails could feel his stab wound more and more with every step, his entire body aching and stiff from the stun bolt he'd taken. The hallways of the mansion were dark, with not even a single candle burning in the darkness. Squinting to see, he sheathed Ring and brought up his T-Buster, using a low-power sustained charge to illuminate the halls.

"Ring, is there anyone here? Can you find Tabitha?" Tails mumbled aloud.

"Yeah bro, she's right where that elf dude said she was. I'm not sensing anyone here… wait, no, someone's with Tabitha. Her mother, I think. Some jumbled-up dreams, that's all I'm getting."

_The tin soldier saw daylight again, and he heard a voice say, "The Tin Soldier!"_

Tails nodded and rushed up the stairs, following Vitartial's direction to the door. Without knocking, he flung the door open, revealing Tabitha sitting at a chair at her mother's bedside. He watched with a grin as she looked up with her practiced deadpan face, tired and mentally worn to the bone, and stained with tears. With a grin, he ran over to her side and lifted her from her chair with a hug, cradling her head over his shoulder. "Hey, we're here now. Everyone is outside and waiting…"

_The tin soldier stood there dressed in flames. He felt a terrible heat, but whether it came from the flames or from his love he didn't know. He'd lost his splendid colors, maybe from his hard journey, maybe from grief, nobody can say._

He heard Tabitha gasp. Suddenly, a burning pain engulfed his shoulder as a knife was violently thrust into his back by an unknown assailant. Time slowed to a grinding halt as his very flesh turned black with negative Chaos energy, seething with anger that someone would deny him his time with Tabitha, or worse, take her life in front of him. He let go of Tabitha and thrust her back into her chair as he switched to plasma-cutter mode on his T-Buster, spinning about with his arm outstretched in a blind swipe at the new threat. Behind him, where once stood some shady gargoyle-like monster now lay two halves of said monster, cut in half at the torso level that quickly toppled to the ground, lifeless. Tails could feel time return to normal as he withdrew the knife from his back, pain registering in his mind once more. He looked over the knife and was surprised by its build; surprisingly short, more like a sharpened letter opener than a knife.

Tails turned around to a frightened Tabitha, shocked and speechless. "You're... hurt. I need my staff," she whispered.

"No, it's fine," Tails said, his voice distorted by the negative Chaos energy. Suddenly, memories flashed through his mind – memories he had completely forgotten about, brought back by his time as Emerl downloading memories of Shadow's Chaos powers. He held his left hand to his blackened chest fur, palm flat against his chest. "Chaos… Control!" he yelled, drawing on the memories of Emerl's time with Shadow. A small green bubble formed around his chest, encompassing his entire torso. From the memories that Emerl had brought back to him, he knew that Chaos Control had reversed time within the localized field to "undo" the wound, a technique that Shadow coined "Chaos Regeneration". He felt as though his body were breaking down on the spot as the last of the pent-up negative Chaos energy spent itself on closing his wounds, his body returning to its normal color. Taking a moment to catch his breath, he let out a relaxed sigh, as if a weight had been lifted from his shoulders. "Come on, Tabitha, lets go."

_Then the door blew open. A puff of wind struck the dancer. She flew like a sylph, straight into the fire with the soldier, blazed up in a flash, and was gone. The tin soldier melted, all in a lump…_

Stepping out into the hallway, she directed Tails down to her room, where she knew Vitartial had kept her staff while she was in her mother's room. She gently opened the door and stepped into the room, where her school clothes and staff were stacked neatly on the end of her bed. "As if someone knew she would be leaving… Vitartial, I bet." Tails thought to himself.

Suddenly, all hell broke loose. Another one of the dark gargoyle-like-creatures jumped out from behind a wardrobe next to the door, lunging for Tabitha with another knife in hand, but Tails was faster on the draw with Ring. The scimitar's weighted tip bit deep into the monster's shoulder and dragged it with the blade through the swipe, causing the would-be fatal stab to Tabitha's neck to fall short and slice her arm. Tabitha recoiled from the blow and dove for her staff as Tails proceeded to dislodge the scimitar blade from the monster's shoulder and swing again, slamming the wide, flat tip into the monster's head like a club. The monster's purple eyes went dull as it went unconscious or died.

"Alright, Ring, explain," Tails yelled aloud at his blade in frustration. "Why didn't you see those things coming?!"

"I dunno, man… they didn't have thoughts. They weren't human. Shit, this place must be loaded with them," Ring replied, his mouthpiece clattering away.

Out of the corner of his eye, Tails saw Tabitha slump down against the end of the bed, too weak to stand. Fueled by an unholy adrenaline rush, he ran over to her side and laid her on her back, noting that her face was already beginning to go pale.

"Partner, check the knife!" Ring exclaimed. The fox lunged for the knife where it fell on the ground, a sinking feeling absorbing him from the inside. Just as he had feared, the tip of the sharp blade was covered in a dark goo, oozing out of some compartment like a broken ballpoint pen. Exactly similar to the knife Naedrithal had used to try to murder him, in fact. "Shit, shit, SHITshitshit!" Tails yelled in exasperation, looking around the room for anything that could help, but nothing came to mind.

"Bro, can you repeat that thing you did to yourself to heal her?" Ring asked, trying to jog Tails' mind.

"No, not without a Chaos emerald at this point," Tails replied. "Negative Chaos energy builds up over long periods of time or as I use Power Rings, lots of them. I just used it, so I won't get that back for a while. But… I have an idea." He pulled up his T-Buster and removed the waiting Power Ring from its slot, as well as the two stored in his rocket shoes. "Let's pray this works," he said, activating all three Power Rings at once. A sudden surge of energy filled his body, emanating as a golden aura around his figure. He had to focus hard to keep it from healing his own wounds further as he placed his hand on Tabitha's arm.

"Chaos… Control!" he yelled. A familiar green bubble encased Tabitha's arm, followed by a nasty sucking sound. A large stream of black liquid oozed out of the  on her arm momentarily before it sealed itself, with the green bubble flickering out of existence moments after. Scrambling for the knife, he held up the short blade and accessed the hidden vial in the handle, checking the contents remaining. "Shit, there's no way that can be all of it," he thought to himself, looking back at the black puddle that was staining the quilt over the bed. "Too much empty space in this container. If the field only affected her arm, and some of the poison was carried in her bloodstream... shit..."

Tabitha began to slip in and out of consciousness. "Come on, Tabitha, stay with me here!" he cried, tears obscuring his vision as he tried to shake her to keep her awake. "We'll get this fixed. We just need to get you some antidote… Montmorency!"

Struggling with the knotted fabric, he removed his blanket cloak and hood, laying them over Tabitha before picking her up. Tossing her staff and clothes on top of her, he scooped her up and bolted for the door as fast as his legs would carry him, flying through the halls at breakneck speed. He blasted through the open main door and out through the courtyard, taking to the air with his tails as soon as he cleared the main gate. Through the intense rain he flew, dashing over the buildings as fast as he could. "Don't you dare die on me, Tabitha! You can't be another Cosmo!" he thought to himself, his sight blinded by tears and rain.

_The next day, when a servant took up the ashes she found him in the shape of a little tin heart. But of the pretty dancer nothing was left except her spangle, and it was burned as black as a coal…_


	82. Season 3 Chapter 23

Tension was in the air as the group waited outside the wagon, with Montmorency inside working her potion magic. Tails sat on an empty mead barrel, head in his hands and his mind swimming with thoughts and prayers to some unknown, unnamed deity. "God, Tabitha, please be alright," he muttered to himself.

Saito walked over and placed a comforting hand on Tails' shoulder, but he shrugged it off without looking up. "Come on, Tails," the boy said. "You did your best, and that was more than we sho ask of you. It's not your fault."

Tails lifted his face to give his friend an icy glare. "You know it's my fault. I didn't wait for you guys to help, and I didn't go first when entering that room. It was my own mistakes that put her life in danger. That should be me lying in there, at worst, and no one at all if I had done my damn job," he snapped.

His gaze shifting toward the ground, Saito silently backed down, taking a seat on the ground by the wall. The alley grew silent as the rain slowly died down, the light of the plaza torches filtering into the alleyway a little brighter for it. Montmorency silently stepped out of the wagon, her face downcast as she began rummaging through one of the supply bins nearby. All eyes turned to her, anticipating the worst.

"Well? How is it?" Guiche asked.

Montmorency gently shook her head. "It'll be close. If this works, then she'll be alright if we keep her on the antidote for a day, I think. It'll take a few days for her to get her strength back, but that should be all. Worst case scenario, it was a blend of poisons that will kill her either way, or she reacts badly to the antidote."

No one in the group dared to move or react to the information as they thought over the possibilities. "Anyways, back to business," Montmorency stated, bringing the group to order. "Sylphid is still in there according to what Tabitha was able to say before going unconscious again, and that they’ll definitely execute her now that she is out. Any ideas?"

"A head-on assault would do, now that we know most of the guards are completely wasted or hiding in the palace," Saito stated, crossing his arms. "Problem is, we don't know where they are keeping her. So the question is, can we get to her fast enough before they know we're coming back for her?"

"And how do we get her out?" Guiche asked. "Odds are, she won't be ridable, and she couldn't carry us all even if she were."

"Simple," Derflinger said, popping out of his sheath on Saito's back. "We'll have her transform into a human and carry her out."

Everyone but Tails and Saito looked at Derflinger with incredulity. "What are you talking about, Derflinger?" Malicorne asked. "She's a dragon, right?"

This time, Ring chipped in. "She's a Rhyme dragon. She can transform into a human at will. Tails has known that for a while, but has kept it a secret on orders from Tabitha."

Saito nodded. "Yeah, Derf told me a little while back that he suspected something like that. So we'll need to carry her out, but if the guards are on us we'll need to make a quick getaway… That means someone has to get the wagon close to the place to pick us up. Malicorne, can you do that?"

The rotund boy nodded vigorously. "Yeah! I can do that. What about the stage stuff? If we just leave it, we'll look suspicious when we disappear."

"We can't waste any more time sitting around," Guiche stated. "They'll know it's us if any of the guards see that Tails is with us, so it'd be better we leave it and pack light for the trip home. Once she's good to fly, we can use Sylphid to get Tabitha back to Tristain for more medical help. Right?"

"Yeah. Alright, let's go," Tails said, lifting himself from his chair. "Malicorne, Tiffania and Montmorency will stay with Tabitha in the wagon near the front gate. Make sure no guards see her. Everyone else will break in and secure Sylphid. Let's go."

The group of five took off into the alleys, their blanket-cloaks fluttering behind them as they ran. Tails could hear Saito draw Derflinger behind him, holding the straight-edged blade low and at the ready as he ran. It wasn't long until the group had retraced Tails' first path to the mansion, reaching the main gate without opposition, the reserve guards nowhere in sight. The rains had washed away the minimal bloodshed from Tails' first conflict, leaving the mansion just as he had first seen it.

"Alright guys, be ready," Tails called, nervousness evident in his voice. "There were tons of weird creatures in here last time, creepy monsters with poison knives. Let Saito or I take the lead entering new rooms."

Nodding in acknowledgement, Saito ran up to the front door and slammed it in with his elbow, his Gandalfr-rune-induced strength easily moving the hefty front door despite its massive size. The group rushed into the darkness with Guiche at the head, waving his rose-wand at every corner of the reception hall for potential threats.

"Guiche, take this," Tails said, unsheathing Ring and tossing the scimitar to him handle first. The blond-haired boy caught the sword awkwardly, giving it a test swing. "You actually USE this unbalanced blade?" he asked, looking over its unusual design.

"Yeah, the weighted tip gives it better swinging power at range, like an axe. Also, take this," Tails replied, pulling up his T-Buster and tossing him the freshly-generated Power Ring waiting in the storage slot. "Snap it into the slot on the back end of the tip. It'll give Ring some more strength, and it acts as a nice handhold."

Saito pushed up past the group, heading for a door on the left. "Let's start looking, I guess," he offered, gently pushing open a double-door to a new hallway.

"Wait, she's not that way," Ring said aloud, startling Guiche. "I can sense her human thoughts… From the right hallway, but below this floor. Some sort of basement, I guess. A bit far, because she only popped into range after Guiche added the Power Ring."

Tails nodded. "Good job, Ring. Let's go find us some stairs."

* * *

 

Joseph chuckled with glee as he went over the report that Sheffield had brought him. "Wonderful! So our full party of guests are downstairs? We'll start with an appetizer. Send the remaining guards and your pets to give them something to think about."

"And if they escape, lord Joseph?" Sheffield asked, gently raising her face to meet his eyes.

"We'll let them go, and send our ace out to a suitable playing ground to challenge them," he replied. "Everything is going according to plan, my dear Sheffield. Just watch…"

* * *

 

The group took off down the right hallway, checking doors individually until they found the spiral staircase headed into the depths of the palace. They proceeded slowly into the darkness with Tails and Kirche at the head, the red-haired girl using her magic to ignite unlit torches plucked from wall holders. The light of the flames danced along the stone walls as they delved deeper underground, into a chilly dungeon-like floor lined with steel-bar doors. Many of the cells were empty, but one cell caught Tails' eye as they passed by, the glint of metal and glass from the firelight glimmering in the unlit chamber beyond.

"Wait a second, guys," Tails said, stopping at the metal door. A few quick swipes from the plasma cutter's beam and the bars fell inward with a loud clang, deafening in contrast to the dungeon’s utter silence. Kirche handed him a lit torch as he stepped into the room, with the others following immediately behind.

"Oh, shit," Saito muttered to himself… "This isn't good."

The wall was lined with preserved bodies in a variety of uniforms, encased in glass boxes sealed tight at the seams with some sort of putty. Guns accompanied the green-clad men in their cases, ranging from the smallest of handguns to a massive rifle almost as tall as the taxidermized corpse next to it on the far end of the room. Each bore the same insignia of a crossed hammer and sickle on their brass belt buckle, as well on the shoulder decorations of the few deceased soldiers who had them.

"I've seen these uniforms before, in a video game once," Saito mumbled to himself, walking over to a uniformed soldier's body. "These are Russian. Soviet. Used to play a game called ‘Call to Honor: World at War’ on my laptop with these guys in it. What are they doing here?"

"A lot of guys brought here from the same place… I dunno if that’s a first," Tails guessed, looking over each case. "We definitely can't let these guys keep this stuff. They'd have a HUGE leg-up on Tristain's Gunpowder Squadron if they reverse-engineered these. We'll pick them up after we get headed out, but Sylphid comes first. We’ll burn it all if we need to, though. Throw them all in a pile and cut them up."

The group headed back out of the storeroom into the hallway and proceeded further into the dungeon. "Is it just me, or are the spaces of wall between the doors getting bigger?" Guiche remarked as he ran.

"Makes sense, if they are storing something big like a dragon," Ring replied out loud. "Not too much farther."

After a few more cell doors, the design of door switched from bars to solid plate metal, much like Tristain's holding cells. "This is the one," Ring stated. "Someone else is in there… not sure if it's a guard."

"Well, we're about to find out," Tails said, switching his T-Buster to plasma cutter once more. The door hinges yielded no resistance, melting to a super-hot metal slag with a single pass of the contained plasma beam. The door fell inward with a loud crash, causing the everyone to flinch from the deafening noise. Inside, Sylphid lay chained up against the left wall, accompanied by a brown griffin with black wings chained up against the right wall. Both creatures were startled awake by the crash of the falling door and now stared wide-eyed at Tails and the group. Sylphid began to moan and growl in anxiety, ready to be free.

"Tails, need help with this?" Louise asked, withdrawing her black-handled laser saber from a pocket in her barmaid dress. The pink blade flicked into life in her hand, triggered by the heat of her palm as she drew it.

Tais nodded. "Yeah. Help me with these shackles on Sylphid here," he replied, making his way over to one of the blue dragon’s massive hind legs. An even larger metal shackle was latched around her legs, wings, and even arms, chaining her to the wall with several sturdy chains. The shackle took some time to cut through due to its thickness, but the metal finally yielded and clattered to the ground after several minutes of gingerly slicing the hot metal, careful to keep the molten liquid from spilling on its captive..

As the last shackle on her arm clattered to the ground, Sylphid bent down and licked Tails from the chest up in a single swipe of her scaly tongue, grateful for the rescue. "It's good to see you too, Sylphid," he replied, patting the dragon on the head. "We need you to become human to get you out of here, though, since none of the doors are big enough for you to get out."

The dragon looked wistfully at the creature across the room from her, letting out a grunt. Suddenly, the room filled with a flash of light as Sylphid changed forms, shrinking down to her human body once more. Tails undid his blanket cloak and covered her up with it before continuing.

"I'm not leaving without Lèontine!" Ilococoo cried exhaustedly, staring at Tails in silent pleading. Tails looked over to the griffin once before looking back at her, confused. "She's a Rhyme Dragon too! Just a griffin instead of a dragon," she added.

"Ooohhh, gotcha," Tails replied. He walked over to the watchful black-winged griffin and began gently cutting through the shackles as the group waited and watched. "Hey, Louise, you gonna give me a hand here?" Tails asked as the first shackle clattered to the ground.

The group looked amongst themselves for a moment. "We've got Sylphid and Tabitha, right?" Kirche questioned. "Shouldn't we be, you know, GONE by now?"

"Yeah, well Sylphid isn't leaving until we get her friend free, and we'd be gone faster if you helped. So one of you bring that laser saber over here and give me a hand!" he grunted in reply, working over the second shackle.

Saito gently took the active laser saber from Louise's grip and walked over to the griffin, working on the metal bands opposite Tails. Within a few minutes, the griffin was free to walk around, stopping to nuzzle Tails and Saito with its head. The griffin let out a short cry, to which Ilococoo nodded in response. "Go ahead, Lèontine! They're my friends. It's okay!" she replied.

The cell was once again filled with a blinding flash of light, forcing everyone to cover their eyes. When Tails' vision went back to normal, another girl similar to Ilococoo stood before her, with golden eyes and long brown hair down to her lower back. She was slightly shorter than her dragon counterpart, but had broader shoulders and hips in exchange.

"Thank you for your help. I thought I'd be in here forever!" the girl stated, bowing deeply in Tails' direction. In the background, everyone stood in shock at the two transformations they had just witnessed. Feeling an onslaught from Louise over the two girls' nudity past due, Saito hurriedly undid his blanket cloak and handed it to the new girl, leaving her slightly confused.

"Tie it around your neck," Tails indicated, pointing to Ilococoo who had now tied the blanket corners around her neck, covering up like a poncho. "No need to walk around naked."

Lèontine's face flushed red with embarrassment, "I'm so sorry!" she uttered, tying the blanket on. "I didn't mean to embarrass you. I'm sorry!"

Louise stepped forward, pointing at the brown-haired girl. "Just make sure to keep that thing on!" she yelled, flustered. "I don't trust these two dogs around women like you. Or any of you, for that matter," she added, gesturing to Ilococoo and Kirche.

"Hey, we're all friends here! Lets try to get out of here first, and THEN you can rant," Kirche angrily replied. On cue, the sound of loud footsteps echoed down the hall, a crescendo of single hurried steps to a roar of moving feet and jangling armor.

Saito darted for the door, sticking his head out to check both ends of the hall. "Come on, guys! We need to get going!"

The seven made their way into the hall, but Tails took the lead and turned off into the room full of Soviet bodies they had visited earlier. One by one, he began cutting open the cases with a quick slash of his plasma cutter, the glass crashing to the floor nearby. "Everyone, grab a weapon! Even if you can't use it, grab everything from the case and bring it with you!" he yelled.

As the group scrambled to grab up the gear from the cases, Saito rushed over to the nearest opened case and grabbed a rifle and the stack of five magazines that sat below it. "Oh yeah, this'll do nicely!" Saito announced as his rune's weapon-proficiency skills took over. "SVT-40 semi-automatic ass-beater. I'm liking it!"

Tails finished slicing open the last case, deactivating his T-Buster as the glass crashed to the ground one final time. "I'll go for the big one, since it looks easy to operate," he joked, reaching for the massive rifle in front of him by the pistol grip. The hefty weight of the rife surprised him and almost made him fall on his back as he lifted the beast out of the case, grabbing it firmly by the forward carry handle. "Jeez, this thing's heavy! There's not much ammo for it, too," he said, reaching back into the case for a large carry pouch. Flicking open the lid of the ammo pouch revealed five rounds per case, with two cases tied together by a yellowed string to make a single carry device. Tails plucked a single shell from the case and pushed it into the chamber, followed by ramming the bulky bolt home. "Let's go!"

The fox stepped out into the hallway to meet his new attackers, still some distance down the hall and closing quickly. Shifting his grip from the carrying handle to the bipod like a crude forward grip, he hefted the massive rifle to his shoulder and struggled to align the sights on his target. "Almost there…" he thought as he struggled to control the weight, getting the sights lined up on the first visible soldier.

One swift trigger pull, and the entire world went silent as the deafening roar of the cannon echoed down the stone hall. The massive 14.5 millimeter round scythed through the rows of rushing soldiers, punching a neat hole through through their armor as the tungsten-cored projectile sailed on its way. The recoil slammed Tails down onto his rear, nearly knocking his head on the stone floor if it weren't for his tails to cushion the fall.

"Dang, I'm not doing THAT again," Tails thought, his ears ringing from the blast. While he regained his wits on the ground, Saito leaped into action, leaning around the doorframe to unload a magazine into the wave of rushing soldiers. Guiche stepped out into the hall with Ring in hand and a smug look on his face.

"Real men fight with swords!" he yelled, charging his opponent with his wand in his off-hand. A quick flick of his wrist dropped a few rose petals on the stony floor, creating several of his signature metal Valkyries that jumped into action behind him.

Tails leaped to his feet, hefting the massive rifle to ready position. "He's gonna get himself killed," Tails muttered to himself as he began loading a new shell, the previous one already extracted from firing. Sure enough, Guiche's forces were slowly beaten back as the guards managed to hack his Valkyrie golems to pieces, but not without losing some of their own. Guiche held his ground at the front of the group, having pocketed his rose wand to wield Ring with both hands.

Saito stepped out of the doorway once more, this time with a new weapon in hand and the SVT slung over his back. "Guiche, get back here!" he yelled, raising the new rifle to his shoulder. Guiche ducked out of combat and darted back to the others while the rest of his Valkyries held the soldiers off. As the final Valkyrie was cut down, Saito opened up with his rifle, some automatic carbine Tails hadn’t seen in the room. The chatter of the gun never seemed to end as it chewed through it's massive drum magazine, the hallway illuminated by its wicked muzzle flashes.. The guards dropped one by one as the hail of lead cut into them, leaving the fresh soldiers exposed behind. The few remaining soldiers turned to run as Saito's magazine ran dry, but Tails was ready, having laid down to deploy the bipod on his own weapon. The massive rifle kicked up a cloud of dust as it rang out once more, cutting through several soldiers as they crammed into the stairs at the end of the hall. Before the dust settled, the few remaining soldiers had disappeared up the stairwell, not sticking around to see the rest of the otherworldy arsenal their opponents wielded.

"Ugh, next time remind me to get a smaller gun," Tails said as he massaged his ears, trying to end the ringing. "I can't imagine this being used for anything short of stopping a rhinoceros.

Saito bent down and gently tapped the rifle's barrel, getting an instant feel for its history. "Yeah, it's an anti-tank rifle. PTRD, some Russian acronym. If you want to trade, you can have one of these…" he added, starting to remove the SVT shouldered on his back.

Tails shook his head. "Nah, I'll deal with it. Let's just get going before they dredge up more reinforcements from the drunk people." The fox got to his feet and hoisted the rifle to a comfortable carrying position

Tails poked his head into the storage room to check on the others, noting that every case was clean and clear of weapons. To Tails' surprise, Lèontine was loaded down with almost all of the weapons hanging off of her shoulder by their carry slings, all while holding her own like a club. "It's the least I could do," she replied, noticing Tails’ surprise.

The group took off into the hall, careful of the piles of bodies and other carnage that littered the hallway for any living soldiers. Even after they had made it well up the stairs, the stench of blood reeked in the air, all the way until they were back to ground level. The mansion was once again empty, but this time the front door was wide open, with the carpet scuffed from hurrying feet. "The guards are bookin' it," Ring confirmed, having read Tails' mind. "The three are still out front in the wagon. Let's go."

* * *

 

King Joseph let a slight grimace cross his stony face as the sounds of gunfire echoed through the mansion to his ears. "That doesn't sound good," he thought aloud.

"That'd be some of the otherworldy relics, I've no doubt," Sheffield stated in a low voice, standing at her master's side. "They were stored in close proximity to the two captured Rhyme Dragons. If the Gandalfr was with them, then they would most likely be able to use them as their original owners had. This was my fault, sir. Please allow me to recapture th-"

Joseph raised a hand to silence Sheffield. "You will have your time, Sheffield. I believe it's about time to test the power of the Jormungand. Do the researchers have it fully compatible with the jewel?"

The purple-clad lady was hesitant to respond. "…Yes and no. It is functional, but they are having issues controlling it. It has been prone to over-powering the golems it has been placed in, causing a mess to say the least."

"That won't be a problem with Jormungand," Joseph stated with a shake of his crowned head. "Tell them to prepare it at once. It's a shame that you'll be the first one to play with our new shiny toy, but my time will come. Have fun."

Sheffield grinned, her skin rough with goosebumps. "Oh, I will, your Highness… I will."


	83. Season 3 Chapter 24

The wagon rumbled along steadily along the dusty road, headed southeast on a different route than it had arrived on toward the desert-like terrains of southern Gallia. As the wagon rumbled into the canyons between dusty plateaus, the students anxiously sat around Tabitha where she lay. Toward the front of the wagon, Montmorency worked her craft over another dose of the supposed antidote, with the soft clinks of glassware punctuating the boring rumble of the wagon wheels.

"What kind of venom was it?" Lèontine asked, staring at the unconscious girl with hawk-like attention as she noted her breathing and movements.

Guiche shrugged and fished out the poisoned knife that Tails had saved from the mansion from a bag, handing it to her. She curiously sniffed the tip of the blade, her face scrunching up at some odor. "I know this. I haven't seen it in a long time," she stated.

"Do you know the cure?!" Tails blurted, jumping out of his seat. He quickly sat down again and regained his composure before Lèontine responded. "I do, and so does she," she stated, nodding to Montmorency. "The stuff she's making right now will work, but it's not very effective. This is an old Gallian poison, stuff that's been around for a long time, so the antidote's been around for just as long. The problem is that it takes a long time for the poison to be flushed out of the victim's system, so she could be down for a while…"

"How do you know all of this?" Montmorency asked as she worked.

Lèontine laughed a little. "Well, we ARE a few hundred years old. Rhyme Dragons live for a really long time. Sylphid's probably some hundred and fifty years old, and I'm not much more than that, I'd guess."

Kirche's jaw dropped. "A hundred and fifty?! That's like… older than our great-grandparents!"

Ilococoo nodded. "Yup! It's just part of who we are," she explained, happy to talk again. "Both of us used to live in Gallia, but we never ran into each other."

Montmorency looked up from her work as she mindlessly stirred a new liquid blend. "So are you both Familiars?" she asked. "Not to disrespect you, I mean."

Lèontine shrugged. "Well, not until last night, now that I think about it."

"What do you mean by that? Were you summoned by someone in the castle?" Louise stated in surprise, snapping out of distracted gaze.

"No," she replied. "Back before wizards became adept at summoning Familiars, they'd go out and form a manual pact with a creature. The conditions of the pact varied by race and possibly gender of the creature in question."

"Ah, I get it," Derf replied, popping out of his sheath on Saito's back. "If I remember right, Rhyme Dragons only formed pacts with people that helped them. They're absurdly stubborn, so they rarely accept, which has led to their decline." Lèontine gave the talking sword a steely glare for the insulting description, but allowed him to proceed. "Since they wouldn't accept, people tried to get them into little stints that would require human assistance, which usually ended in the humans getting killed. Add human irrationality and bias, and boom, everyone goes on a Rhyme Dragon hunt when one kills their brother's landlord's niece or some garbage."

"That's about it!" Ilococoo added in. "I became Tabitha's familiar long before she summoned me at the Academy, back when she was on a mission to kill me. She was ordered to assist her uncle's men, but she killed them all instead. Kablam!" she exclaimed, waving her hands in exaggeration, "and they were all dead. I could've taken them myself, but since she helped me and I was getting pretty lonely, I decided to tag along with her."

Guiche nodded. "Very interesting! So then, Miss Lèontine, who are you in a pact with?" he asked, adjusting his costume in an attempt to make himself more presentable.

"The fox, of course!" Lèontine replied, turning to face Tails with a smile. "He was the first to act in getting me free when the rest of you were skeptical, so he'd be the natural candidate. It hasn't been made official, I suppose, but we can get to that later."

Tails looked around the group as they matched his gaze with looks of incredulity. "Uhh… is that even possible? A Familiar having a Familiar?" he asked.

"Sure it is!" Lèontine replied. "Watch!"

The girl stood up from her seat and walked over to him, taking a seat next to him after Guiche scooted out of the way. Without much warning, she took him by the face and kissed him briefly, then backing off and waiting patiently. Her skin grew pink like a hot iron as blood rushed through her body, then died down as fast as it had happened. "Done," she replied. "It's official."

"…what." Kirche stated, her mouth wide open in surprise. "The Academy taught us only wizards could form pacts like that!"

Ilococoo shook her head. "Nope! Anyone can do it, as long as both parties agree. The Familiar Summoning is more or less a method of bringing together a creature and a human who already agree to the terms. Since the Familiar Summoning came around, people forgot the individual specifics of the races for pact forming, and only wizards can perform the Summoning. Knights used to form pacts with their mounts before people started getting into big wars. People needed more dragons, so they stopped doing it for the sake of speed and interchangeability."

"Tails, you lucky duck!" Malicorne mumbled, sulking in the back of the wagon. "Why can't I get a cool familiar like that…"

Tails sat numbly, his head completely devoid of thought as the spoken words whizzed in one ear and out the other. "Waaait a second… what," Tails replied. "So that means I'm bound to four people now? There's no end, is there," he muttered. "And if all of that's true, where did I ever sign on the dotted line saying I wanted to be a Familiar?"

No one had a response to this, but Ring popped out of his sheath sitting on the floor by Tabitha. "Well, congratulations, partner. You now have me AND a Rhyme Dragon to deal with."

"Looks like we've got more than that to deal with!" Saito cried from the driver's seat. "Professor Colbert's here!"

Tails poked his head around the edge of the canvas wall, scanning the sky. Far in the distance, the hazy silhouette of the Ostland  approached, followed by the gentle roar of its turbines that grew louder and louder. Within a minute, the airship roared overhead, blasting past the wagon as it began to bank right to turn around.

The Ostland came to a hover over a flat-topped hill not too far from the wagon, the turbines spooling down to a suitable idle RPM. Saito brought the wagon alongside as the loading bay door lowered to the ground. The moment the ramp hit the ground, a horde of students spilled out of the ship’s belly to greet their heroes, with Colbert standing watch at the top of the ramp.

"It's good to see you're all unharmed!" the professor yelled over the crowd. "Do you have Miss Tabitha? Where is her dragon?"

Saito gave Colbert a thumbs-up, pointing to the back of the wagon with his other hand. The man replied with an inquisitive look, but Saito simply shrugged in response as the group filed out of the wagon.

"Professor Colbert!" Tails called, running up the ramp. He gave the man a handshake followed by a quick hug. "It's great to see you made it out alive! I saw the griffin knights after I landed and was a bit worried that they might hurt you."

Professor Colbert sighed, rubbing his neck in remembrance. "Agnès almost had me, to tell you the truth. I think she learned a valuable lesson though, so I suppose it was worth it."

Tails was about to laugh, but his wristcomm suddenly flared into life with a notice message. He raised the watch to his face and began spinning about in place very slowly, raising professor Colbert's curiosity. "What's wrong, Miles?"

"Something's not right… My wristcomm hasn't given me this message in at least a year or more," he replied, not looking away from the small digital screen.

Over the whine of the Ostland's turbines, a sudden whistling sound split the air as a schoolbus-sized boulder flew over the deck of the aircraft, smashing into the dirt some seventy meters down the hill from the airship. The students whipped into a frenzy as they rushed back on board the ship, with Saito running back to the wagon to goad the startled horses toward the craft’s loading ramp.

"Hurry up!" professor Colbert cried as he wrestled with the control chain to raise the door. Tails jumped into the wagon as it boarded the craft and reached under the benches, yanking his PTRD and ammo box to him. Donning Ring's sheath and the shell carrier over his shoulders, he picked up the rifle by its carry handle and hopped out of the wagon, sprinting back down the ramp.

"Miles, what are you doing?!" Colbert called as the fox took off down the length of the ship’s hull as fast as he could with the rifle taller than he was in his hands.. Another boulder shook the ground as it slammed into the hill, this time in front of the Ostland.

"Whatever it is, I'm sure it has that Emerald I need! Get out of here, I’ll deal with it!" Tails yelled as he ran around the side of the ship. He didn't stop to see whether Colbert complied as he leaped into the air, his tails spinning at full speed to get him airborne as quickly as possible. Shouldering his weapon, he peered into the distance down the sights of the lengthy rifle, scanning the rocky outcroppings and plateaus for his first target. “This terrain’s so different than what we were seeing hardly a few miles ago… It’s not even that much hotter here. This place can’t be natural…” he thought.

Nothing dared show itself as the fox ascended higher into the air. His arms tiring from supporting the heavy rifle, he cradled his rifle in his right arm and pulled up his wristcomm. The Chaos Emerald tracker program was still active, pointing a few degrees to his left. The signal was plenty strong, however, so he knew it had to be close…

"Maybe it's something small," he thought to himself as he scanned the ground, unable to find anything. Suddenly, a large black mass stepped out from behind a rock formation, holding up another boulder. "Jeez, that thing's gotta be four stories tall!" he said aloud as the steel monstrosity came fully into view — an enormous golem shaped like a suit of armor, with glowing red eyes that were nothing short of terrifying. The black golem lined up a two-handed throw with it’s new projectile, lobbing the massive boulder at the slowly-rising airship. Thankfully, its lead was pretty bad, and the rock sailed clear under the ship as it rose into the air.

"Whatever it takes," Tails thought, "I've gotta get that Emerald! Maybe if I get it, it'll power down." Taking the heavy rifle back in both hands, he began to fly toward the golem, when a loud cry pierced the air behind him. He turned to see Lèontine flying toward him at full tilt, once again in griffin form. She pulled up beside Tails and stared at him, giving him an awkward thumbs-up with her talon-tipped front paws.

"She says 'You think you'd rush off into our first fight without me?', if you were wondering," Ring stated in Tails' mind. "Make sure to get Tabitha to use a translation spell on her later."

Tails glided over to her back and dropped down onto her, careful not to whack her in the head with the heavy barrel of his rifle. When he was fully seated, she launched forward into a breakneck dive that almost threw him off of her back. As they approached, the massive golem zoomed into view, the fine engravings on its colossal body becoming apparent. A small figure stood on the giant's shoulder, leaning casually against its armor's neck guard.

"Oh, I know who that is," Tails muttered to himself. "She's not getting away this time." He flicked open the lid of the ammo canister and picked his third shell out, ramming it into the chamber and shoving the bolt home behind it. Using one of his tails to support his arm, he raised the rifle to his shoulder and leveled the sights on the approaching target, the muzzle of the rifle inches from Lèontine's head. "Lèontine, swing wide left around the target! I don't want to deafen you, but this is gonna be loud."

As soon as she had turned to give him a better shot, Tails let the first round rip, nearly knocking him off of her back from the recoil. The round was a bit high and to the right, but didn't impact the metal beyond the figure as he had expected. The air shimmered around where the bullet was headed, followed by a small puff of dust as the round disintegrated.

"It's another shield, bro," Ring stated. "This one's absurdly tough. Invisible, and I don't think it has the same weakness that elf guy's did."

"Makes sense that it's so tough, if it's using a Chaos Emerald," Tails replied out loud. "Those things put out a LOT of energy."

"Is there any way we can stop it?"

"Depends. Back home, we found a few methods of stopping them, but almost all of them involve either touching the Emerald directly or using another Emerald to cancel its effects. Since we don't have our own Emerald, we're limited in our options a bit. The Chaos Emerald only actually supplies power to other objects, so I'd be willing to bet that the shield is still magic-based."

Suddenly, clusters of dark bat-like figures began to rise out of the canyon crevices, taking to the air. Each one had a glowing purple mark on its forehead, which Tails recognized from the flying manta ray when Louise was nearly kidnapped. He hastily extracted a shell from the ammo case and crammed it into the rifle. "We've got a lot of company coming this way!" he yelled, catching Lèontine's attention. "This is gonna get nasty."

* * *

 

Saito helped herd the students around the decks of the Ostland, doing any job he could to prepare the ship for flight. "Professor, we need to help Tails!" he called into the control room, stepping inside.

"I know! But I'm not sure how, and my students take priority," the bald man replied, staring grimly at the open sky in front of him.

"Tails is your student too, damn it!" Saito yelled back over the bustle of students.

"I KNOW!" Colbert yelled back, slamming his fist down on the control panel. "I know. If only we had more time to set up the Great Spear…"

"The great what now?" Saito asked, stepping into the control room. "Is there something on board we can use to fight back?"

Colbert sighed. "Yes, there's the Great Spear. I was due to bring it back from Germania to the Academy, but never had the time to offload it. We think it's another weapon, but we aren't even sure if it's operational. It was in Germania's stash of otherworldly goods. They gave it to me to research, as part of my contract."

"Show it to me," Saito demanded.

With a nod and a few quick commands, Gimli and Reynald took over the controls at  Colbert's request. The professor jogged out of the room and down the halls to the stairwell with Saito close behind,  making their way down into the cargo hold, far forward of the cargo ramp. Behind a mound of supplies stood a tall object covered in a canvas tarp, tied down to various mounts in the floor. Saito quickly drew Derf and cut the ropes, lifting the tarp with his sword.

"Professor, you're about to see something really cool," Saito stated with a grin.

* * *

 

The massive rifle Tails wielded roared once more, bringing him down to a count of four remaining shells. One of the dark-bodied gargoyles started to get too close, forcing him to set the anti-tank rifle in his lap and draw his T-Buster, unloading several deadly pulses in its direction. A single hit sent the beast packing, but more began to fill in its place.

Over the beat of Lèontine's wings and the pulses of his T-Buster, the roar of the Ostland's turbines grew louder and louder. With a hail of resounding thumps, the airship plowed through the cloud of gargoyles, knocking them clear out of the sky to a fatal fall. Below, Tails could see the massive golem reaching for another rock to hurl at the airship, but was suddenly interrupted by a reverberating blast that filled the air. A wispy cloud of smoke sprouted from the side of the Ostland as it began to circle around its opponent, instantly followed by a brief, earsplitting shriek and a massive explosion that engulfed the metal monster in smoke.

Tails peered closely at the ship, trying to figure out what happened. "What the hell was that?!" he thought. As the smoke cleared while the Ostland flew, he could make out a long grey barrel sticking out of the loading-bay door that hung open. "They've rigged themselves up a gunship!" he said to himself excitedly. "Ring, it's possible to brute-force your way through a shield, right?"

"I suppose so. The greater the impact, the more strain it puts on the power source. You remember when your shield gave out back when you died, right? It took a cannon and a helluva lot of arrows to stop you, and that's from a pretty small power source like yourself."

"Well, guess what. We've got a cannon."

* * *

 

"Load up a new shell!" Saito directed to Malicorne as he yanked open the loader hatch of the FlaK-38 artillery gun. before returning to the controls. His Gandalfr powers urged him to endlessly fine-tune the gun elevation and lead as the Ostland encountered turbulence, as if his hands were merely motors, his brain a ballistics computer.

"We're good to go!" Guiche yelled as he closed the breech. Saito took a final look through the sighting apparatus as he made final adjustments to the controls, watching Tails' lightshow of plasma pulses dart across his vision. "Fire in the hole!" he called.

Guiche pulled the trigger, unleashing another eighty-eight millimeter projectile of death. Saito could see through the gunsmoke as the round arced toward its target, impacting a second later almost dead-center on the golem. After the flames and smoke of the explosion had cleared, the golem still stood, staring confusedly at its own empty hands where a boulder had once been.

"Still no effect! We need a new plan!" Saito said, turning to face the others. "Louise, we need your void magic! You've gotta try something here, we can't do anything except keep beating at it, and we don’t have many shells!"

Louise's eyes darted from student to student in a panic. "I don't know if I can! I need time…"

"We don't have time here!" Saito replied, turning back to the gunner's sights. "Figure something out!"

"I've got an idea!" Guiche said. He walked over to Louise and began whispering something in her ear, making her turn beet-red. "Saito, you bastard dog…" she muttered, gripping her wand tightly in one hand and her other slowly reaching for the laser-saber she kept in her dress pocket.

"Louise, do the spell now!" Saito yelled, not daring to look away from his target downrange.

Understanding Guiche's trick, she raised her wand, pointing it at the shell that Malicorne now held…

Tails was down to two shells for his rifle, but many targets were too close to use it effectively. Many gargolyes had wisened up and began rotating in an opposite pattern around the golem, running into Lèontine and Tails head-on. He did the best he could keeping the gargoyles off of them from behind with his T-Buster while Lèontine shredded into the colliding gargoyles with her talons and beak.

Suddenly, three gargoyles caught Lèontine head on, rocking her with recoil. She let out a screech and bit into the first gargoyle with her massive jaws, ripping its head clean off. Without anything to hold onto, Tails was launched clear off of the back of the griffin from the blow, falling for quite a distance before recovering into a hover on his own. He was dangerously close to the golem if it tried to throw a rock, but still just out of its arm reach, he guessed.

Another loud boom filled the air as another round zipped on its way to the target, but this one was different. A flash of light filled Tails' eyes as the round impacted the golem, cutting clean through the shield and impacting the metal directly, hardly thirty meters from him. A few odd bits of shrapnel from the explosive shell cut into his arms and legs as she shielded his face, but he managed to grit his teeth and stay airborne. As the smoke cleared, a hole the size of small car remained in the steel golem's armor, its edges jagged and unevenly broken from the impact. Tails could hear the angry screams of the purple lady, who was somehow still miraculously standing on the golem's shoulder after taking shelter by its neck, but he had no time to help her. He dropped his rifle and dove for the hole, barely making it through before the golem began to probe its own wound with its massive hands.

Inside, the hollow armor was nearly completely dark, with the tree-trunk-sized fingers of the golem's hand blocking the hole. Dead-center in the chestpiece, a faint white light pulsed from within its metal container that hung from a chain from somewhere up high. Tails drew his T-Buster and began slicing away the bars of the cage, plucking out the snow-white Chaos Emerald from its support.

With a deafening roar, the armor walls around him began to shake, followed by the percussive blast of a fourth shell from the Ostland that shook Tails to his core. He looked back to the hole, but it was still blocked by the golem's hand. "I seriously hope this works!" he thought as he held out the Chaos Emerald, his eyes closed. "Chaos…"

* * *

 

Saito watched through the FlaK-36's sighting scope as the golem toppled to the ground, the armor breaking into several smaller fragments as if it were glass. "We did it!" he cried as the last of the gargoyles disappeared from view.

The rest of the crew broke out in a chorus of cheers, swarming the gunner crew to shake their hands or hug them. However, the rest of the group felt uneasy as the griffin they had been watching so closely continued to circle the wreckage, searching for something. Saito took another look through the optics of the cannon, watching and waiting.

"Something's wrong," he muttered to himself, catching Guiche’s attention. "Tails isn't on the griffin's back."

A hush fell over the crowd as the news was passed around with muffled whispers. "So where is he?" Guiche asked.

"I dunno. I don't see him. The griffin girl doesn't, either."

Saito thought he heard a small pop out in the hallway, but determined it must've been his imagination, still recoiling from the shock of the loud cannon. "So, what'd I miss while you guys were playing with the big toys?" a familiar voice said. The entire group turned to see Tails standing in the doorway, leaning on his massive, battered rifle like an oversized walking stick. A glowing white gem bigger than his fist rested in his hand, capturing the attention of the group.

"How did you… You were down there, and…" Guiche stuttered, pointing back at the golem's body. "What?"

Tails shrugged. "Hey, I heard the party wagon was leaving for home and I didn't want to be late. Gotta go fast, right? Ring's already calling back Lèontine, so she'll be here any minute."

The entire group of students rushed forward to give Tails a hug, but stopped short for some reason. He felt a light tap on his shoulder, something rough and hard. He turned to see Tabitha standing behind him, her unwavering gaze locking with Tails' eyes as she leaned on her staff. Montmorency ran up from behind her, taking her by the shoulder. "Sorry! She's not well yet, really ghostly pale as you can see. I'm surprised she made it this far while I was changing out of that costume. Sorry."

Tabitha brushed the girl aside and stepped forward, embracing Tails in a deep hug. "Hey, Tabitha. We're back," he said, returning the embrace. After a few moments and some stifled "aww"s from the students, Tails turned a little and took Tabitha's arm over his shoulder, guiding her back to her room. "Make sure to do what Montmorency tells you, ok? You'll be better in no time."

The three headed into a small bedroom with minimal furnishings, the only table in the room coated with Montmorency's supplies. Tails helped Tabitha lay down in the bed, taking her staff from her and setting it against the headboard. "Make sure to get some rest, alright?" he said, turning to leave the room. "I'll drop by every now and then until we get home. Be back soon."

The fox turned to leave, but Tabitha coughed, causing him to look back. "I'm sorry," she whispered, her voice hoarse.

Tails grinned slightly and shook his head. "No, don't be. I should be the one saying sorry, since it was my fault you got hurt…" he replied, trailing off.

"Thank you."

"It's what friends are for. I'm not losing any more of my friends due to my own mistakes, and you're no exception. Sleep well, we'll be home in no time." With that, Tails stepped out into the hall and gently shut the door, letting out a sigh of relief.

"Good to see she's doing better!" Ring said aloud. "She probably wouldn't be if it weren't for you."

"Maybe. There's something still bothering me, though," Tails replied, eyes transfixed on the white gem he'd been clutching the whole time. "…yeah. That must be it. Where there's one Chaos Emerald, there's more to follow. If I can find the rest, I might be able to return home without the solar eclipse."

"Looks like we've got our work cut out for us, then. They were powering that massive golem with it, so they might try to cook up more if they find the others."

"No kidding. They could be anywhere on the planet. Bottom of the ocean, on a mountaintop, heck, even the moon…" Tails let out a sigh and walked down the hall to the stairs, ascending to the upper deck. Lèontine was there, waiting in griffin form. She bounded across the deck, coming to a screeching halt as her sharp talons gouged the wood floor. Laughing, the fox patted her head, checking her over as she licked his face with her scaly tongue. "It's good to see you too, Lèo!" he replied, setting his massive rifle on the floor. "I was worried for you, after I fell off. I should have gone to you instead of back here after I got the Emerald. Sorry about that."

Lèontine let out a low rumble, her golden eyes scanning every part of the twin-tailed creature. "Yeah yeah, I'm fine. Don't worry about it," he said, looking over the scratches and cuts he bore. "They aren't that bad. I'm going to go take a nap, 'cuz I'm tired as heck. See ya."

Tails patted Lèontine's head once more, picked up his rifle, and stepped back inside, heading back downstairs to the lower decks. He took the first open bedroom and shut the door behind him, kicking off his shoes and undoing Ring's sheath. With a yawn and a stretch, he plopped down on the double-sized bed, happy to relax again…


	84. Season 4 Chapter 1

The roar of the airship's whistle reverberated through the walls, tearing Tails from his deep nap. "Must be almost back," he thought to himself groggily, rubbing his closed eyes with the tips of his tails.

"Hey, Tails," Tails could hear a voice from his left. His eyes flicked open and scanned the room as he sat up in surprise, finding both Lèontine in her human form curled up on the end of his bed and Tabitha at his side. "What the… Did I not lock the door?" he thought, wiping his eyes with the back of his hand, still clutching the white Chaos Emerald. "Why are you guys here?"

"Well, I didn't want to sleep outside in the wind, and all of the other rooms were taken," Lèontine stated, sitting up. "She came in before me, but I'd rather be with you than outside. Why is SHE here, I don't know, but she shouldn't be if she's still not doing well."

Tails noticed that Lèontine was still without clothes and averted his gaze. It took a moment before Lèontine herself noticed it, embarrassedly grabbing the sheets of the bed and yanking them back to cover up. "Sorry!" she blurted, bowing her head.

The quick withdrawal of the sheets caused Tabitha to shiver from the cold air, slowly waking her up. She sat up and stared at Tails, silent and calculating as always. "Hey, Tabitha. Why are you here?" he asked. "Are you feeling alright?"

Tabitha paused for a moment before nodding and looking at Lèontine. "Who is she?" she stated in a level tone.

"Uhh… When we went back to get Sylphid, she was there too. She's a Rhyme Dragon. Tabitha, meet Lèontine. Lèontine, Tabitha," Tails replied awkwardly, pushing himself further to the back corner of the bed against the wall. The two girls stared at each other silently, locked in some secret evaluation, until Lèontine extended a hand around the sheets she held up. "Nice to meet you. I'm not normally… you know… undressed. Nothing happened here."

Tabitha quietly took her hand and shook it, nodding in her direction. "Well, now that that's been cleared up, I think that whistle meant we're here,” Tails said, breaking the silence. “I'm headed outside for some fresh air. Tabitha, if you're still not feeling well, you need to go see Montmorency. We'll take you there."

Stepping gently over the blue-haired girl, Tails hopped out of bed and collected Tabitha's staff. He extended a hand to help her out of bed, but she shook her head and slid out of bed, gently taking her staff from him. "I'm fine," she said with a slight smile.

"Good to hear!" Lèontine said, leaping out of bed. "I'm going to run outside real fast before anyone sees me and turn back to my normal form. I'll be outside if you need me." She turned to leave, darting out of the room for the upper deck. Tails collected Ring, his battered PTRD and its ammo canister before heading for the door, watching Tabitha carefully for any signs of weakness.

The two made their way outside, where Leontine was waiting in her griffin form. In the distance, the capital of Tristain rapidly approached, the white and grey castle towering above the houses and trees that looked nothing more than grass or rocks in comparison. A few other students joined the three on the upper deck, some stopping to admire Lèontine or wish Tabitha well. "I wonder why we're headed to the castle? Louise must be nervous as heck right now if we're facing the Queen," Tails thought.

He felt himself pulled forward slightly as the airship began slowing down, coming to a gentle stop over the same landing field they had used last time. Over the edge of the ship, he could see several guards surrounding the perimeter of the field, cordially waving up at the ship. The keel of the airship settled with a quiet thud on the soft grass as the massive propellers slowed to a stop, their turbines' steam being vented through the top of the wing with a dramatic hiss. Lèontine enthusiastically leaped over the edge of the ship, startling the guards into drawing their weapons.

"Ready to head down?" Tails asked Tabitha, shifting his grip on the massive rifle he held. She nodded silently and began walking to the door, but he took her by the hand over to the railing instead. Placing his arm around her, he flicked his tails into action and hovered down the side of the ship, landing softly in the grass. The guards rushed over to the two, with a familiar face at the forefront of the group.

"Hey, Tails! Good to see you aren't dead again!" George greeted the fox, slapping him on the shoulder. "Looks like you built yourself an overly-complicated walking stick, I see."

Tails laughed. "One that could put an apple-sized hole through you from a mile away, yeah!" he replied jokingly. "No, I didn't build this. Would've done a better job, if I had. How have you been?"

"Oh, you know, makin' the world safer one robber at a time," George replied. "And your girlfriend? Lookin' a little sick from travel, if you ask me."

A quick glance to Tabitha showed her face was pale, but she stood resolutely without complaint. "Master, not girlfriend. I'm her familiar. She was poisoned in a fight, and is recovering. Doing better, though," Tails replied for her.

"And is this beastie with you as well?" the knight mentioned, jerking his head toward the griffin that eyed him curiously.

"Yep."

"Alrighty, then," George stated, backing off a bit. "We'll only be needing you, your lady, a Mr. Saito, Mrs. Vallière, Mrs. Westwood, and… uhh, shit, I forgot. Let's see… Oh yeah, Grammont's son, that's who I was forgetting. We'll wait for your friends to unload, but then we need to get you up to the Queen. She's got some stern words for you, I'd reckon."

The airship's loading bay door promptly dropped open, disgorging the ships' cargo of students to the field below. Professor Colbert followed orders relayed to him by the knights, allowing Guiche, Saito, and the girls off of the ship. The four joined Tails and Tabitha at the bottom of the loading ramp before heading out, leaving Sylphid and Lèontine to play around in the grass near the ship while the rest of the students raised the ramp.

"Feeling okay, Tabitha?" Saito inquired, looking her over. "I'm glad you're up, but you're still looking kinda pale. You sure you don't want to stay on the ship and sleep some more?"

Tabitha shook her head once more. "Alright, whatever suits you," he replied, backing off a bit. "So, Tails, you haven't explained it to us yet. How did you get back to the ship so fast without the griffin?"

"With this," he said, holding up the white Emerald. "This is a Chaos Emerald. Long story short, they're essentially limitless power sources that select Mobians can personally tap into, or they can be used in machines. I learned how to do that teleportation trick back when I turned into that robot at that dance we had at the Academy, but I've always been able to use them whenever I had to. Mostly I use them for powering my vehicles, like the Tornado."

"That's pretty cool," Saito said. "Anyways, I wonder what the Queen has to say."

Louise elbowed him in the gut. "Probably nothing good, thanks to you. She was probably worrying her head off, and we just threw another war on top of everything she's dealing with!"

"Chill, Louise. What's gotten into you, recently? You've been on edge all day. Was it something you read in that weird book professor Colbert gave you?" Saito asked. Louise shot him a quick glare, but returned to staring at the ground. "It's… stress, that's all. Don't question me like that!"

"Whatever it is, you guys'll get through it fine," Ring butted in, popping out of his sheath on Tails' hip. "At least, that's what I think. Then again, there's not much anyone can do to me, so there's that."

* * *

 

The group of students and knights strolled through the castle, making their way through the large halls and up the stairs to the throne room where the Queen and her assortment of guards and ranking officers waited expectingly and attentively.

"It's good to see you all again!" Queen Henrietta exclaimed, rushing forward to give Louise a hug as usual. The embrace caught Louise off-guard, leaving her to awkwardly return the hug. "Your Majesty, you aren't… mad at us? We broke out of jail and crossed borders-"

"None of that matters right now. It was wrong of me to keep you from saving your friend, and whatever comes will come… I'm just glad you're all safe, home again," she replied, releasing Louise. "Anyways, there are a few matters of business to attend to. First off, Miles, Saito, please step forward."

Tails and Saito shot each other inquisitive glances before turning their attention to the Queen, who had turned around. She retrieved two black bundles of fabric with the golden clasps still resting on top, just as the two boys had left them. "I assume you would like these back. Am I correct?"

"Absolutely," Saito replied, stepping forward to take back his cloak and clasp. Tails followed suit, nodding in thanks as he took the bundle of cloth from Henrietta's hands. He took a moment to fumble with the clasp, securing the cloak around his neck once more. "Feels good to be back!"

Henrietta nodded. "On to the next part, I have a new task for you all. Rather, a request from myself and the Pope of Romalia that we received while you were gone."

Louise was taken aback. 'The Pope?! Me? Wha… why would he call me personally?"

"And Tiffania, as well. It most likely has to do with your Void magic, although why he made this request he didn't explain. However, I have a more urgent request."

"And that'd be?" Saito said.

"Get some rest," Queen Henrietta replied with a smile. "You have all been running ragged since this all started. Especially you two, Miles and Saito. I will go ahead to Romalia to get started, and have you follow in two days on the Ostland. In the meantime, please head back to the Academy and relax for a while."

Louise interjected. "Your Majesty, we can go with you now! Surely we can rest on the trip there, or-"

Henrietta giggled and shook her head. "Louise, if you won't do it for your own sake, do it for mine. You need it, and most certainly deserve it. Unless you have any more objections, I'll be seeing you in Romalia the day after tomorrow."

Without any further complaints, the group allowed themselves to be escorted back out to the castle to where the Ostland had been, but it was gone. Sylphid and Lèontine were playfully wrestling in the grass, having a good time.

"Why did the Ostland leave without us?" Guiche asked, receiving no reply. Saito walked over to the two hulking creatures, making himself known to the two as they released each other and rolled back to their feet. "Looks like we're flying home with you two," he said.

Sylphid looked at Tabitha expectantly, letting out a low groan. Tabitha nodded in reply, slowly making her way over to the blue dragon, leaning on her staff harder than before. She made an effort to climb up on Sylphid's back, but stumbled back to the ground. Tails ran forward and helped her up onto Sylphid's back. "Guiche can ride with me, while you two ride on Lèontine," he said, nodding toward the griffin. The other three loaded up, taking a moment to get comfortable. With a quick glance at each other, the two Rhyme Dragons launched into the air. Tails could feel Guiche latch on to one of his tails in panic as the acceleration slid the three back along Sylphid's scaly back before coming to a stop as the dragon leveled out, slowly accelerating with infrequent beats of her massive wings. Lèontine wasn't far behind, quickly closing the distance between herself and Sylphid.

"This isn't a race, guys," Tails called over the rushing wind. Lèontine and Sylphid looked back at him momentarily, a note of disappointment in their eyes, before reluctantly slowing down. Guiche let go of Tails' tail as he settled down, relaxing for the ride ahead of them. "Sorry about that. Caught me off guard, that's all."

Tails nodded, flicking his tails free and wrapping them around in front of him. Tabitha leaned back against him, half asleep from fatigue as the last of the poison took its toll. Curious, he shifted the white Chaos Emerald to his left hand and removed his glove on his right glove, placing the padded palm of his hand on her forehead. "She's running a bit of a fever right now," he thought, pulling his hand back and putting his glove back on.

"The fever's probably a sign that it's almost over," Ring broadcasted into Tails' mind. "A last convulsion as the body cleans it out, I'd guess. Let me ask Lèontine."

Tails waited patiently for a response as Sylphid's body rose and fell with the beat of her wings. "…Yeah, Lèontine agrees. She'll probably fall asleep here in a little bit and pass through the last bout of it," Ring stated after a moment. Sure enough, Tabitha was out cold when Tails returned his attention to her, her eyes shut and her breathing slow and even. He grabbed her staff from her hand before it could fall from her grip, setting it on top of his heavy rifle in his lap. Careful not to disturb her, he shifted her head to his right shoulder and wrapped his tails around her stomach to keep her from falling off.

Louise shot Tails a dirty look as Guiche leaned forward to speak to Tails. "You know she's a princess, right? Be careful how you handle her."

"Shut up, Guiche. She's a friend first of all, and she's sick. You'd do the same thing."

"Albeit for the wrong reasons. Might go for a feel," Ring added with a chuckle. Guiche slid back a bit, his pride injured.

Tails did his best to sit perfectly still as the two creatures glided through the air, puncturing the monotonous sound of rushing wind with the percussive flapping of their wings. Tails noted that he could feel his own, slightly rushed heartbeat in his chest, and the smell of Tabitha's hair filling his nostrils. "Reminds me of dreams I used to have of Cosmo, way back when," he thought to himself, smiling at the thought. "I wonder how she's doing, back home."

"I'm sure she's fine, bro," Ring said in his mind. "Just focus on flying."

"Yeah, yeah, I got it." Tails replied. He gently pushed Tabitha forward and slid up to get a better grip on Sylphid, hanging on for the ride home.


	85. Season 4 Chapter 2

After an afternoon of slow flying, the group finally touched down on the soft grass of the Academy's inner yard. Tabitha, now drowsily awake, dropped to the ground and took her staff back from Tails.

"I wonder where everyone is?" Saito asked as he slid off of Lèontine's back. "The place seemed empty from the air."

"Probably all asleep," Derflinger offered. "After partying on the ship the whole way home, they must be tired."

A loud groan filled the air as the massive front doors of the Academy swung open. Inside, Malicorne stood in front of the rest of the Ordine Knights, with Gimli and Reynald on either side of him. "Welcome home, guys!" the rotund boy called, beckoning them forward. "Sorry we left you behind! We decided to have a party of our own for your success, so we rushed home to set up. Come on!"

"I'm going to go take a nap before dinner," Louise said, walking off toward her dorm. "Saito, I'll see you after dinner."

"Alright," Saito replied. "Tails, you in?"

Tails nodded. "I need to go drop my stuff off in the workshop for the evening, but then I'll be right there." He took off toward the small wooden workshop nestled against the perimeter wall, throwing the door wide open as soon as he reached it. "Home sweet home!" he said to himself, taking a deep sniff of the musty air that wafted out. Shifting his grip on the anti-tank rifle, he shut the door behind him, taking a moment to massage his sore shoulders from supporting the heavy weapon. "Mr. Colbert would love to see this thing, I'd imagine. Looks like the bipod took the brunt of the fall when I dropped it, so that might need fixing," he thought looking over the rifle one last time.

He shuffled across the dusty floor to the trapdoor, finally managing to get it open with his foot after a few tries. He slowly climbed down the ladder into the dark gloom of the unlit workshop, the pale glow of the white Chaos Emerald reflecting faintly off of the metal walls. After setting the PTRD against the wall, he raised his wristcomm to his face and tapped cycled through the options on the backlit screen, finally finding the program he wrote for the lights. The Power Rings in the ceiling grew into life, illuminating the silent workspace he knew so well.

"Just as messy as I left it," Tails joked to himself, walking over to the workbench. He set the Chaos Emerald on the workbench scooped up a handful of basic tools, carrying them over to the X Tornado that sat forlorn at the far end of the room. "Let's see… I had to remove and rewire some of the Chaos Emerald slots for the Power Ring generator…" he muttered, clambering up on top of the cockpit. With the press of a small, concealed button on the outer frame, the glass canopy popped open with a mechanical hiss, the controls flickering into life to greet its owner. Tails' hand hovered over the controls until he located the correct button, pressing it and hopping back down to the ground. A small slot on the side of the frame popped open, revealing the few remaining slots modeled after the shape of the Chaos Emeralds.

"Geez, how many hidden compartments do you have in this thing?" Ring laughed. "It's like a flying warehouse! I remember seeing at least two other spaces, if not three."

"Not many," Tails replied, walking back to his workbench to fetch his HUD device and the Emerald. "There are only two 'storage' spaces, one being for emergency tools and first aid, and the other being for the Chaos Emeralds to power the whole craft. The other spaces you remember are just access ports for servicing the engines and other electronics."

After placing the Emerald in one of the few open slots, he withdrew a pair of needle-nose pliers from the pile of tools he had set on the ground at his feet and began tracing wires from the side of the Emerald holder. "I know I left that part in here somewhere…" he muttered, digging into the darkness through the jungle of wires.

"What are you looking for? Do you know what it looks like?" Ring asked.

Tails withdrew his head from the crevice and shot Ring an odd look. "Hey, I BUILT this thing. I'm pretty sure I know what the part looks like. Heck, I only unplugged it… just before I came here, however long ago that was. Feels like it's been months, but it's probably only been a few weeks at most. Anyways, the part is an ancillary power supply switch," he explained, sticking his head back into the mess. "The Power Ring generator I upgraded to become the main power source used to be a secondary supply, with the Chaos Emeralds being the main source. Of course, that became a problem when we didn't have any of the Emeralds, so I switched over to just Power Rings. But, now that we have an Emerald again, I need to switch back, which will require tuning down the Power Ring generator a bit. Actually… scratch that, I’ll leave it at full power. The Tornado can handle it."

"Whatever, I'll leave the techno-stuff to you. I'm just a sword, ya know? All I do is fight people."

The twin-tailed fox burst into a short fit of laughter, accidentally whacking his head against the airframe. "Somethin' the matter, bro?" Ring asked.

"No… you just sounded exactly like my best friend for a minute. Ah, that hurt," he added, rubbing the back of his head.

Digging back into his work, Tails managed to locate the part he was looking for within fifteen minutes. Two loose wires were securely taped to the side of the unit, waiting to be reattached to the two empty aircraft-grade clasps. "Bingo," he thought. He opened the two occupied clasps and gently tugged the wires out of their connections with the pliers, switching them over to the two clasps that had been unoccupied. "Now we've switched the generator back to secondary, we just reconnect the Emerald panel…" he thought as he reconnected the taped wires, balling up the tape and tossing it behind him. After latching the clasps shut, he gave the wires a quick test by tugging them. Satisfied that they were secure, he backed out of the service panel and began climbing up the side of the aircraft.

Ring let out a metallic fake cough to catch Tails' attention. "You know the others are waiting for you in the party, right? They're getting impatient."

"Oh, crap… yeah, forgot about that," Tails said. He hopped back to the ground and took off toward the ladder, undoing Ring's sheath and tossing him on the canvas hammock as he went. "Be back in a little bit," he said.

Tails bolted up the ladder and ran out of the building, slamming the door behind him. Saito had just stepped out of the front door of the Academy when the fox arrived. "There you are! We were wondering if you were going to show up."

"Yeah, sorry about that. I got caught up in some work on my X Tornado for the trip tomorrow. Where's Tabitha?"

Saito shrugged. "Off taking a nap or something, I guess. She just walked off after you left and I haven't seen her since. Anyways, come grab something before Malicorne inhales the rest of the snacks."

Tails followed Saito inside to the ballroom where the Slepnir Ball had previously been held. There, a banquet table of hors d'ouvres was laid out, as well as several tables of board or card games that all of the Ordine Knights were gathered around. Cheers and applause echoed through the room when everyone saw Tails enter, causing him to blush in embarrassment.

"Hey, make some space for the hero!" Tails could hear Guiche call. A spot at one of the game tables opened up, which he graciously took. Guiche sat across from him, with Gimli and Reynald on either side and other boys Tails hadn't met filling in the rest of the space. Saito brought him a plate of various snacks ranging from fruit to meats and cheeses of all sorts.

"So, how does it feel to be a celebrated hero so far, Tails?" Reynald asked. "I mean, first you saved the Queen within your first week, faced down an army practically alone, and now this! It just doesn't stop, does it?" Saito began to make protest, but stopped himself out of courtesy.

Tails grinned. "Yeah, what a time to be alive, right? It seems like fate's got me and Saito on speed-dial."

It hadn’t occurred to Tails that Guiche didn't understand the euphemism, giving Tails a quizzical look. Suddenly, his gaze immediately refocused on something behind him. Tails turned around to see Lèontine standing by the door of the ballroom in her human form, dressed in a school uniform. When Lèontine caught sight of Tails, she waved and began making her way over.

"Man, being a hero gets all the ladies, doesn't it?" Reynald stated, pushing his glasses up onto his face. "Saito gets Tiffania and Siesta, and you get Kirche and this beauty. Who is she, by the way?"

"Hey, Miles!" Lèontine said, walking over to Tails' side and giving him a bow. "Where were you? I searched around the campus but couldn't find you, so I visted Kirche and picked up some clothes from her. Do I look good?" She twirled around, showing off the Academy outfit that Kirche had lent her.

Tails nodded. "Yeah, you look great! I'm not familiar with fashion here, so I'm not sure how much my opinion is worth on the matter. I was in my workshop, I'll show you it a bit later."

"What are you guys playing?" she asked, pulling up a chair to Tails' side. "Liar's dice? King's-rules Poker?"

"We were thinking of actually grabbing the roulette wheel from the other group when they're done, but we can start with blackjack," Guiche said. "Care to play, miss…?"

"Lèontine," she said, cutting him off. "I figured you'd remember, since you were there when I met you guys," she added with an annoyed look. "And yes, I'd love to play."

Gimli began dealing out the cards from a deck he'd fetched from another table as Tails dug into his snacks. "Hey, this stuff is pretty good," he remarked after taking a bite out of a meat cube. "What is it?"

"Marinated liver," Guiche said with a note of interest in his voice. "I'm surprised you can keep a straight face while eating it. Probably the vilest meat I've ever tasted."

Tails shrugged. "To every man his own, I guess." When Gimli was done doling out the deck, Tails picked up his hand and observed his cards. Guiche began with a hit, instantly going bust, followed by Reynald taking a hit and holding.

"I heard from Sylphid that Tabitha is pretty good at these gambling games," Lèontine said, gazing at her own cards as the game progressed around the table. "I don't know how much skill is involved, but she must be doing something special."

Tails nodded, lifting up the corners of his own cards to take a peek. A jack and a five stared up at him, then disappeared as he set the cards flat back on the table. "Some of it's mathematical, I suppose. Depending on the value of your hand, you can determine the percentage of success versus failure. From there, it's all just how risky you want to play. Anything beyond basic risk assessment seems a bit excessive if you ask me. I'll hit."

Gimli slid a card to him across the table that Tails stopped with a finger and picked up. "Another five. The odds of me getting an ace are pretty low, so I'll hold," he thought to himself. He slid the card into his small stack on the table and shook his head. "I'll hold," he declared.

Lèontine placed her cards on the table face-down and crossed her arms. "I'm holding as well."

"Confident in your hand, are you?" one of the boys asked with a tone of indignance. "Must be pretty good."

The girl smirked. "Better than yours, I'd wager." The boy raised an eyebrow and took the card that Gimli offered him. "Seems like your odds are slim. I'll hold."

"Well, that's everybody," Gimly announced. "Does anyone need another card? No? Then flip your cards, please."

Everyone flipped their hand, revealing their cards. Guiche and Reynald both struck out by more than three points, while Tails, Lèontine, and the other boy tied for twenty points by various means. Everyone else got up to go get more snacks while Gimli began to hand more cards to the winners. "We'll do this by an open-hand match," he explained. " If you choose to take a hit, you will take your card and place it face-up in your hand. Aim to get as close to twenty-one once more."

Lèontine and the challenger boy flipped their cards, with Tails following suit. "Tails, will you hit?"

After a moment of contemplation, Tails nodded. Gimli handed the fox another card, which he flipped and placed next to his other face-up card in play. "A seven, three and a nine. That's getting close…" he thought, gently biting his tongue. "Let's see what others get."

Lèontine didn't think twice about taking a hit, pushing her up to twenty once more with a jack, an ace and a nine. Pleased with the outcome, she shot a sly grin to the boy that had challenged her. "Try me," she said.

"You're on," he replied, taking the card that Gimli handed him. He received his card and slapped it down on the table rather forcefully, shaking the remainders of Tails' snacks. Lifting his palm, a jack of spades stared up at the boy.

"Better luck next time," Lèontine said with a laugh. The boy looked at his hand with disbelief that he had lost, then anger as the thought passed through his mind that he lost to a girl. "Well fuck me," he muttered, sliding out of his chair in humiliation.

"Tails, are you ready?" Gimli asked, eyeing him over. "It's not as if you have much of a choice, I suppose. It's not as if cash is bet on this game."

"So what's the difference if there was?" Tails asked.

"Well, if you go over, you would lose all of the money you bet. If you chose to lose by staying under, you would keep half of what you wagered."

Tails shrugged. "I'm feeling good about it. Toss me one."

The card slid across the table, coming to a stop just in front of the face-up cards of Tails' hand. He began to pick up his card, but Lèontine pushed it back down to the table. "Wanna make a bet?" she asked, her confident air bolstered by her previous victory.

"What do you have in mind?" Tails asked out of curiosity.

"Simple. When we go to Romalia, you take me on a date. Get Tabitha or Kirche to loan you some cash and take me somewhere."

Tails began looking around the table at all of the face-up cards, running the numbers in his head. "And if I win?"

"Well, I'm already your Familiar, so there's not much I can give… You'll figure it out. I'll leave it open-ended for you."

Tails nodded. "Why not? You're on," he replied. Lèontine removed her hand, allowing him to flip his card. The ace of hearts lay in front of him, allowing him to breathe a sigh of relief. "Just what I needed, and about time, too," he stated.

Gimli nodded. "Good call. If you both leave it now as a tie, we'll draw a final card. Whoever draws higher loses. Or, Miss Lèontine can attempt to draw an ace for the win."

Lèontine nodded. "We'll go for the last card draw. Ready to lose, Tails?"

"Oh shit," Tails thought. "I had guessed right for a low card, but now that it's been drawn the odds of getting another low card go way down. I could actually lose this." Realizing that there was no way out, he nodded solemnly and took the card he was handed. Glancing over at Lèontine, he flipped his card at the same time she did hers, but didn't remove his hand from the top of the card.

"Alright!" she cheered, smiling at her own card. She had drawn a four, which was a rather low card given the numbers of aces already used in previous rounds. "Tails, are you gonna show us your card, or are you scared?"

Tails removed his hand from his card to reveal a seven facing up at him. "No surprise, I suppose," he said with a sigh, taking a moment to finish off his plate of snacks.

Lèontine gave him an inquisitive look. "No surprise what?" she asked.

"No surprise that I'd draw a higher card. Look at the table around you," he said, gesturing to the various stacks of face-up cards. "Look how many hands had cards lower than a four. Two aces, a two, and a three are all out by the time I drew this seven. Especially after the fact that we had an ace and a three back-to-back. The odds of another low card were extremely small, and that showed in my draw."

"Huh," she replied, looking around the table to confirm his plan. "You had it all figured out, but got trapped by the cards, huh? That's pretty neat. Well, either way, you lost."

"Yeah, I know, don't rub it in. I was hoping for a two, but it wasn't meant to be, I suppose," Tails said, finishing off the last cheese cube to clean his plate. "Now what? Seems like the rest of the guys have split off to other games."

"Care to show me that workshop you mentioned?" Lèontine asked, getting out of her chair. She picked up her cards and handed them to Gimli as Tails slid out of his chair and did the same. "What kind of things do you build?"

"You'll see. Come on," he replied, turning to make his way to the door. The two stepped outside and made their way back to the workshop, where little wooden shack sat in the waning sunlight.

"This is it?" she asked, peering through a window to the side of the door into the dark room. "It doesn't seem like much."

"There's more," Tails said, holding the door open and gesturing for her to enter. He followed her inside and walked over to the corner of the room, lifting the trapdoor to the illuminated workshop below. "Down here."

Tails quickly climbed down the ladder, moving the PTRD away from the base of the ladder where he had set it over to the workbenches. Lèontine slowly climbed down after him, stopping to check her foothold on every step before reaching the floor.

"Is something wrong? Let me guess, you're like Sylphid and weren't used to ladders," Tails asked.

"Y-yeah, that's all. Wow, w-what a p-place you have!" she stuttered, her hands shaking ever so slightly. "How did you m-make it?"

"The room itself was just a bunch of digging and alchemy, but everything else I made by hand at one point or another," he replied, casually looking around the room with secret admiration. "Stuff like the big winged machine over here and all the tools on or around the benches came from my world, from my workshop back home. I made the benches here shortly after moving in, and the hammock around the same time."

Lèontine walked over to the Tornado and ran her hand along it’s left wing, surprised at the touch of the cold metallic body. "No way!"

Tails laughed. "Yeah, way! This stuff is somewhat common in the other worlds I've been to." The fox walked over to the machine and clambered up on top of the airframe, using the manual release switch to pop the canopy. "I built this one back on a planet similar to the one Saito came from, with some building help from a friend of mine… Lèo, are you SURE you're okay? Your hands are shaking. If you're feeling sick, you're welcome to go lie down and I can go get you some water."

"No, I'm fine!" she exclaimed, finally in control of her voice. "Really, I'm fine…" However, her hands refused to stop twitching. A slight bead of sweat ran down her face that she frantically wiped up with the sleeve of her shirt.

Finally, a lightbulb went on in Tails' head. "I get it!" he said, taking a seat in the pilot's chair of the Tornado. "You've got claustrophobia, don't you?"

"claus-what?" she asked, looking up at Tails with a face of confusion. "No idea what that means."

"It means you're instinctively afraid of tight spaces," he explained. "Or maybe its being underground that does it. Have you ever felt this way before, like when you were put into that dungeon back in Gallia?"

Lèontine nodded. "It was pretty consistent until they started drugging me to sleep pretty often. After that, I was more often asleep than awake. Speaking of which, I might take a nap," she added with a yawn. "Being a human is exhausting."

Tails laughed, thinking her statement was a joke, but quickly quieted down as Lèontine walked over to the canvas hammock and plopped down face-first, falling fast asleep within moments. "Huh, weird," Tails thought to himself, watching the sleeping girl with curiosity. "I wonder if Sylphid gets the same feeling."

"Seems like you had fun. You weren't gone for long, though," Ring said, interrupting the silence of the still workshop from within Tails' mind.

"Yeah, just a quick game of blackjack and some snacks," Tails thought. "She wanted to see the workshop."

"I saw you lost. Got any plans on where to take her for your date?" Ring teased back.

"Don't remind me," Tails thought, facepalming at the idea. "I'll probably actually head to Romalia in the Tornado tomorrow while the others get their stuff together to go look for Chaos Emeralds. Maybe I'll just take her on a quick trip to space on the way there. Can't go wrong with a trip to space."

Ring just laughed. "It cracks me up what you think is romantic. Whatever, just carry on with your nerd stuff. Wake me up when its time to bash some skulls."

Tails nodded. "Will do."


	86. Season 4 Chapter 3

After an hour of fiddling around with the old Emerald radar, Tails decided to take a quick break and step outside for some air. He hopped down from the cockpit of the Tornado and kicked his shoes off for comfort, setting them next to the pile of tools he had left on the ground from work earlier that evening. He silently crept past the hammock where Lèontine was still sound asleep and climbed up the ladder, gently lifting the trapdoor open. The cabin was completely dark as what sunlight illuminated the room before had since disappeared with the setting sun. Crawling out of the hatch, he replaced the trapdoor and pulled up his wristcomm, remotely dimming the lights in the workshop below.

The crisp evening air filled Tails' senses as he stepped outside into the night, quietly shutting the workshop door behind him. "A beautiful night tonight!" he thought, looking up to the stars in the relatively-clear night sky. The twin moons caught his eye, so unfamiliar yet natural feeling. "I guess it's possible that our moon could have split into two parts on separation from the planet during the big asteroid strike. I wonder if this world is actually synchronized with mine in terms of universal location…"

A gentle tap on his shoulder caused Tails to jump in his skin, jerking about to face whoever tapped him. He found Tabitha standing to his right, staring high into the sky as well. "Oh, hey Tabitha," he said, rubbing the back of his head to calm himself down. "Scared me there. Shouldn't you be in bed?... Eh, I take that back. The poison's probably passed. Feeling any better?"

Tabitha nodded silently. "That's good to hear," Tails said, turning his eyes back to the sky. "Probably slept too much and can't sleep now, I'm guessing?"

Nothing but uncomfortable silence greeted his question, prompting him to continue. "You know, I sorta like it when you're so silent. It makes everything that's, well… YOU, a big puzzle. I'm all for puzzles, but sometimes you gotta open up. All of my other friends are super-transparent, but you, you're a whole new ball game so to speak. How are you, really?"

Tabitha looked over at the fox, then back at the stars. "…we left mother behind," she said in a low tone.

The phrase hit Tails like a bus, his eyes widening at the thought. "Oh, shit," he muttered. "You're right. I was so focused on getting you out alive after being stabbed and seeing you get hit that I completely pushed her out of my mind. Even worse, it didn't cross my mind when we went back for Sylphid. Hey, we'll get her back, alright? They wouldn't dare touch her, since she's their bargaining chip for you, as much as I hate to say it."

Tabitha simply continued to stare at the stars, adjusting her red-framed glasses slightly. "I… don't blame you. I can't begin to thank you for what you've done."

"Hey, haven't I told you already? Don't thank me, it's what friends are for," he replied. "I certainly wouldn't be alive today if it weren't for my friends. I couldn't even count on my hands how many times I would have been roboticized or killed as a kid back in Knothole if it weren't for my friend Sonic or the rest of the Freedom Fighters. That doesn't even count when he's saved me from my own stupidity or a malfunctioning prototype… you get the point. 'What goes around comes around' is what I'm trying to say."

Tails felt Tabitha wrap him in a quick embrace, letting go almost as suddenly as she had hugged him. "Thanks, Tabitha," he said with a smile. "And yeah, I know, I probably smell bad from all the running around and stuff. I'm gonna go get a bath before bed. I'll see you in the morning."

Leaving Tabitha standing in front of the workshop, Tails trotted off around the campus to where the massive old cooking pot sat, now turned on its side by someone to keep from collecting rainwater in his absence after Tiffania’s inquisition incident. He took a moment to bring up his T-Buster, withdrawing a Power Ring from the storage slot. He activated the Ring and grabbed the massive tub by the side, using his superhuman strength to slowly lower the pot back over the fire pit. A rattling noise from inside the tub caught his attention, revealing several cords of wood stacked inside the tub for dry storage. "How thoughtful," he thought aloud, picking out the individual chunks of wood and setting them aside. Once the tub was empty, he began taking the logs one by one and shoving them through the small opening in the ground to the fire pit below, slowly assembling a basic structure for a fire.

"Now all I need is the water," he thought. He turned to go fetch a bucket but was stopped by Tabitha, who had somehow crept up behind him once again. She silently waved her staff and chanted a short spell, causing water in the air to condense and fill the tub to the brim.

"Hey, thanks a lot Tabitha!" he said, turning back to the fire pit. "This will take a while to heat up, so I probably won't be in bed for a while. I'll see you in the morning, alright?"

"I'll stay," she said as Tails quickly ignited the fireplace with a momentary blast of his T-Buster's plasma cutter. "Can't sleep."

Tails shrugged. "Suit yourself. I'll go fetch that old table I built and the chairs while the water heats up." He walked off to go find the table, having been left out in the elements for so long. After a few moments' searching, he found it pushed up against the wall of the Academy’s central tower, behind a hedge for storage with the chairs stacked neatly on top of each other. Using the last of his Power Ring energy, he set the two chairs on top of the table and hoisted the table over his head, carrying it over to the tub where Tabitha waited patiently. He set the table down in the soft grass and lifted the chairs down to the ground, setting them on opposite sides of the table. He gave his tails a quick flick to dispel the remains of the energy from the Ring before taking a seat, stretching out his legs for comfort. Tabitha pulled out her chair and took a seat, gently laying her staff on the table.

"…What is home like for you?" she asked, watching Tails intently.

"Pretty comfortable, I suppose," Tails replied. "I live in my workshop in the woods not far from Mobotropolis, a pretty big city. Reasonably sized house for two, since my friend Sonic stays the night a lot. Massive underground bunker built into the side of a cliff for housing and launching the Blue Typhoon, my capital spaceship. I do my own cooking and grow some basic garden stuff in a greenhouse with help from Cream and Cheese once every now and then, although I've automated most of it like the auto-care system for Cosmo. Otherwise I just buy all my food and raw materials for building from stores in the city."

"Parents?"

Tails scratched the back of his big furry ears, taking a moment to run a gloved thumb along their insides because it felt good. "Oh, they visit on occasion, but that's pretty rare. They're always busy with their jobs, what with being the head of the army and a diplomat, respectively. Despite being in a time of relative peace, princess Sally keeps them pretty busy. I've gotten used to living solo since they're almost never around. They’re home maybe a month out of the year, tops."

Tabitha took off her glasses and polished them on the soft interior material of her school uniform's cloak. "Have you always worn those glasses?" Tails asked, looking over toward her. She nodded silently, replacing the glasses on her face. "Huh. They look nice on you." He instantly regretted saying that, mentally kicking himself for his stupid comment, but Tabitha seemed to pay no mind. Steam rising from the surface of the water caught his attention, spurring him to get up and go test its temperature. He peeled off his gloves and gently dipped a finger into the liquid, followed by his entire hand. "a little hot, but the fire will be dying down soon, I'm sure," he thought. Tossing his gloves on the table, he stepped over the edge of the tub and allowed himself to sink into the hot water, shutting his eyes and letting out a sigh of comfort. "Feels so gooood!" he thought.

A few moments later, he heard the gentle sound of splashing water over the crackle of the fire below, drawing him from his moment of comfort. While he had been soaking with his eyes closed, Tabitha had gotten undressed to join him in the tub. She now stared back at him across the surface of the water, her gaze unobstructed by her glasses.

"Uhh, Tabitha… you should have told me if you wanted to join, you'll need a towel," he blurted, embarrassed. Tabitha simply continued to stare at Tails, causing his feeling of awkwardness to rise. He busied himself by using his hands to ruffle all of his body fur, scratching out any dirt or grease that he could. Only until he fully submerged his head to wash his face did Tabitha stop staring at him, her face still fixed and emotionless as she turned to some bird sound in the distance.

* * *

 

"Damn it all, Tabitha! Tell him already and spare yourself the wait," she thought to herself as she waited for the fox to reappear above the surface of the water. "No, wait for the opportune moment," another voice of her mind told her. "You'll get one shot. Make sure it makes an impression."

Finally, Tails' head resurfaced above the water. Tabitha's eyes drifted across the night sky, finding their way back down to Tails' face, taking in every detail in the dim light of the moons and stars. "Uhh, by the way," Tails' said, his voice cutting through Tabitha's distracted thoughts. "I know the Queen said we had tomorrow off as well, but I think I'd like to take the Tornado and head out to Romalia ahead of time to look for more Chaos Emeralds. Would you want to come with me? I don't know how much stuff you would need to bring with you, but we'd only enough space for whatever we could securely store in the fourth seat. Lèontine's probably going to want to come as well, so I'm holding a third seat for her."

Lèontine. That name hung in Tabitha's mind with a bit of bitterness from the few times she'd heard it, especially since this morning when she shared the bed with Tails. She knew that she had no reason to dislike Lèontine, that she hadn't stepped out of line in any way, but that didn't stop her from garnering Tabitha's dislike from her actions toward Tails. "Perhaps it's inevitable that I feel this way," Tabitha thought to herself. "She's fallen in love with my Familiar, and the one I myself am interested in. A sense of competition stirs feelings of jealousy, according to the novels."

Tails gave her a look of confusion. "So, uhh… do you want to come? It's ok if you don't want to-"

Tabitha snapped back to reality, giving him a nod. "Alright, then we'll probably leave tomorrow shortly after breakfast. I'll need to get some general directions from one of the teachers, but then we can head out as soon as you're ready," he explained.

The two sat in the tub in relative silence, simply enjoying the comfort of the warm water. Tabitha felt one of Tails' tails accidentally drift over her foot, which tickled. She contained the laughter with no more than a slim smile, but it was enough for Tails to notice, spurring him to do it again. The smile grew bigger as she struggled to keep from laughing, but Tails didn't let up until she finally smiled, struggling to contain her giggling. "So that's how we get you to smile, huh?" he joked, laughing with her. "Good to know. You should try it more often, it's not as bad as you think."

"Only my mother knew I was ticklish in the feet," she thought to herself, submerging her head just below her nose to hide her dying grin. "Although it's embarrassing, I'm glad someone finally found it. I wonder who would have if not him…"

Footsteps in the grass caught both Tabitha's and Tails' attention, turning to peer into the darkness. "Hey guys!" Lèontine's voice called gently. Without her glasses, Tabitha's vision was limited to things no farther than a few feet or so away – even reading a distant chalkboard in the lecture halls was difficult at times without them – but regardless, she could make out Lèontine's blurry figure approaching the tub in the murky darkness.

"Hey, Lèontine," Tails replied, a note of embarrassment in his voice. "You couldn't sleep either?"

"Yeah, I had a bad dream and woke up in a cold sweat. I figured I'd come find you and just talk for a while to relax. What do you have here?"

"A bathtub that Saito and I set up a while back. It's actually an old, massive cooking pot that Marteau, the Academy chef, threw out because it was too big and unwieldy to use."

"Mind if I get in?" she asked, beginning to undo her shirt that Kirche had lent her. Tails began to protest her actions, but she continued getting undressed either way, denying him the choice. He quickly looked away from her nakedness with embarrassment as she hopped into the tub, breaking the smooth surface of the water with small waves. Once seated, she moved herself next to Tails on his left and stretched back, resting her arms on the edge of the tub. "Beautiful night tonight," she commented.

"Yeah," Tails replied nervously, shifting around in the water slowly. "By the way, Lèo, we just finalized some plans to head out to Romalia tomorrow in the Tornado, that plane you saw in my workshop. We'll be leaving tomorrow morning after breakfast, so be ready. I'm assuming you don't have much you need to pack other than some spare clothes, perhaps?"

"Mhmm," Lèontine confirmed. "I'll need to borrow a few more sets from Kirche, but that shouldn't be a problem. Will Sylphid be coming, too?"

Tails shrugged and looked at Tabitha "It's up to her, I suppose. We had originally planned to pack the luggage into the fourth seat of the Tornado, but if Sylphid were to come, you would need to carry your luggage on your lap, which is less than ideal. Tabitha?"

Tabitha was completely lost in her own thoughts, however. "I wonder if I try what she's doing, will he be more direct about his interest in me?" she thought. "She asked him a question and then denied him a chance to answer. Maybe he likes it when she's pushy? Or maybe he's just enjoying himself, being next to her… body. I've never felt self-conscious about being small-statured until now. Maybe it's jealousy again?"

"Uhh, Tabitha? You're spacing out again," Tails said to the blue-haired girl as she stared back, blank-faced. Suddenly, Tabitha began to slide around the edge of the tub, taking a seat on his right. She could feel his tails slide past her side out in front of him to keep them from being pinned behind her back. "Hey, Tabitha, what the heck? Was there something on the other side of the tub bothering you?" he asked, his eyes facing down at the water. She simply ignored his question, resting her head on his shoulder.

"Hey, Tabitha, if you're gonna go to sleep you shouldn't do it in a tub," Tails said, gently rocking her head with his furry, dripping-wet hand. "You can slip below the water level and drown like that. If you're tired, let me go get you a towel and you can get to bed properly. However, now Lèontine leaned her head against his other shoulder, trapping him in place. "Ok, you two, not funny," he said, looking back and forth between the two. Without giving them any warning, he pushed off of the wall of the tub and slid to the other side of the water, facing the two girls that now sat upright, expectantly watching him. "I'm done," he declared, standing up out of the water and stepping over the edge of the tub. "I'll go fetch you two some towels for whenever you want to get out. Be right back."

Tails disappeared into the darkness, leaving Lèontine and Tabitha seated next to each other in the pool, watching each other accusatively. "I was just trying to have a nice time with him, you didn't need to go ruining everything," Lèontine began.

"Me?! Are you joking?" Tabitha thought, but she didn't voice these arguments, simply staring at Lèontine with her usual cold face. "I was here long before you, having a perfectly good time until you showed up. Everything went downhill from there when you overdid it."

"I know he's your Familiar and all, but he's my master as well, so don't get too comfortable with him," Lèontine continued. "Got it?"

Tabitha simply stared into the darkness beyond Lèontine, focusing on nothing in particular. She shifted to the opposite side of the tub to get away from the other girl, annoyed by her presence in an otherwise perfect night. In the distance, she thought she could hear Tails returning with the towels, his soft footsteps barely audible over the gentle crackle of the dying fire below the tub.

After what seemed like a year of silence, Tails finally returned with the folded towels in hand. "I'll leave these here on the table whenever you two are ready to get out. See you in the morning." With that, he grabbed his gloves, gently dropped the towels on the table and walked off in the direction of the workshop, the sound of his footsteps fading away again. As soon as he was out of earshot, the two girls stood up and stepped out of the tub, drying off with the towels left for them and shortly redressing. Tabitha used a water spell to quickly extinguish the fire with some of the bathwater, then turned to head to her dorm room…

* * *

 

Tails closed the trapdoor and quickly descended the ladder. Before heading over to the workbench, he grabbed his anti-tank rifle and the ammo canister he had hung on it and extracted the last fresh cartridge from its slot. He carried the heavy rifle over to the workbench and cleared a space for it, folding open its bent and dented bipod to prop it up on. Jogging over to his pile of tools underneath the Tornado, he picked up his HUD device and a pair of Robo-Grips, a favorite tool of his that he had picked up from Chris' world. He carried the two tools over to the workbench and laid the wrench-like tool down, picking up the massive rifle cartridge instead.

Looking over the brass and copper assembly, he set the shell on its end and gave it a quick scan with his HUD. The device quickly rendered a model of the cartridge, revealing the exact dimensions and rough materials of the cartridge buried inside. Once the blueprint was saved in the device's memory, he set the display device down and picked up the Robo-Grips, clamping down on the point-tipped bullet itself. After several seconds of grunting and pulling, the projectile popped free of the casing, which he set on the workbench. He dumped out all of the small cylindrical powder granules, making sure none rolled too far away.

"Huh, interesting," he muttered to himself, picking up one of the grains to observe it more closely. He set a single grain aside and gave it a scan with his HUD device, looking over its measurements and chemical makeup. "Standard smokeless powder, five-millimeter diameter, seven-millimeter length, perforated seven times for a more efficient burn. That's a lot of work for something so small. I bet I could do a better job if I had better equipment, but I might need to rely on Colbert's alchemy for this. Speaking of which…"

Setting down the powder granule and scanner device, he stepped away from the workbench and walked over to the 3D printer on the opposite wall, checking his small stockpile of printing supplies. "Thought so," he muttered to himself, rummaging through the piles of materials. "We're running low on most metals, since I haven't had professor Colbert to resupply me for a while. I'll let him know in the morning before I leave, I guess."

The fox walked over to the X-Tornado and hopped up on top of the craft, popping the front canopy with the manual release. Yawning, he took a seat in the pilot's chair and shut the canopy, remotely shutting off the ceiling lights with his wristcomm. Within minutes, he was sound asleep.


	87. Season 4 Chapter 4

Tails woke to the sound of knocking on the glass canopy around him. He let out a yawn and rubbed his eyes open. Looking around, he noticed Tabitha seated on the wing of the plane, illuminated by the multicolored glow of the various devices in the cockpit. "Must be time to go," he thought, pulling up his wristcomm to turn on the lights. The warm yellow light of the ceiling-mounted Power Rings filled the room, revealing three plates of food set on the wing of the jet next to Tabitha, and Lèontine sleeping on the hammock at the far end of the room. The brown-haired girl bolted upright in bed, startled awake by the sudden burst of light. "Ugh… five more minutes, jeez…" she moaned, her voice almost muted by the thick glass surrounding Tails. He hit a switch to pop the canopy, the glass dome rising with the quiet rush of fluids in the hydraulics.

"Morning!" he said, giving Tabitha a smile. "Thanks for bringing the food. Do you have everything you need? I'm almost ready, so whenever you want to go, we can leave."

Tabitha nodded and lifted a small pack by the shoulder-straps in demonstration. "Brought Lèontine's clothes," she added, pointing to a small package she had left just below the hammock.

"Man, Tabitha, you're on the ball this morning!" Tails replied, glady accepting the plate of food she handed him. "Thanks a lot. If that's all Lèontine needs, then we're all set. Hey Lèo, come get some food and we'll get going!"

Lèontine rolled out of the hammock and picked up her clothes before trotting over to the plane. "Where should I leave this?" she asked, holding up the package.

"One moment," Tails replied, reaching for a button on the dashboard behind the controls of the plane. The rear canopy popped open, exposing the third and fourth seats. He hopped out of his seat and walked back to the fourth seat, reaching underneath the front edge of the chair to find a small latch. The seat bottom sprung up, revealing a small storage compartment full of spare electronics. "I hate to be without extra spare parts, but all systems are doing fine so I suppose it's not so bad to go without them," he mumbled to himself. "Lèo, hand me your stuff and Tabitha's bag."

Lèontine complied, taking Tabitha's bag and her own stuff and handing it to him. He gently lifted out the piles of spare circuitboards and soldering supplies and replaced them with the two packs, gently shutting the seat compartment and latching it closed. "Let me just put these parts away and we'll be good to go,” he said.

While the two girls finished up their meal, Tails hopped down from the Tornado and ran the handful of electronic parts over to the workbench, setting them next to the PTRD and disassembled cartridge. "Actually, Tabitha, did you tell someone that we would be leaving?" he asked. Tabitha nodded silently in response. "Alright, thanks," he replied.

He walked back over to the Tornado and took up the rest of his breakfast, scarfing it down as quietly but as quickly as he could. He set the plate on the workbench and wiped his mouth on a small napkin Tabitha had wrapped his silverware in. When the two girls finished their food, he took their plates and stacked it on top of his on the workbench before scaling the Tornado, helping the two girls take their seat. Tabitha chose the one behind Tails, while Lèontine took the front seat of the second canopy. He took his seat behind the controls and hit two buttons, closing the canopies and locking them tight. Reaching to his left, he removed his headset from its holder, gesturing back to Lèo and Tabitha to do the same. He placed the device over his head and tested the volume controls with a quick tap of his mic. "One, two, three, testing," he said. "Lèontine, give me a thumbs up if you can hear me."

Craning his head around his chair, he could see the girl give him a joyful thumbs up before responding. "This is sooo cool! How does this work?" she asked.

Tails pointed to the earpiece. "I'll explain it later. There's a small wheel on the bottom of the earpiece you can use to adjust the volume if it gets too loud. Do me a favor and put your arms on those little flat spots on the side of the wall." As the powerful engines booted up, an x-shaped seatbelt reached around Tails and latched together in the center. "Is your seatbelt good?"

"Yeah. It's a little tight, though."

"Sorry about that. It's built for Mobians, so its default setting is a bit small. Press that yellow button in the center of the latch and it should loosen up." He lifted up his arm and cycled through his wristcomm’s software menu, finding the setting that controlled the workshop’s elevator launch lift. The massive hydraulics mounted into the wall whirred into life, slowly lifting the elevator that the Tornado rested on. He turned to see Lèontine watching the massive pistons with amazement, a elated sense of pride in his work welling up in his chest.

As soon as the elevator locked in place at ground level, Tails momentarily gunned the engines, causing the jet to lurch forward off of the platform. He taxied out to the grass and hit the button on his wristcomm, sending the elevator back into the ground. "As usual, definitely not enough runway. We can fix that," he thought. Another toggle switch flipped, and the X Tornado’s fuselage lurched backward as the jet began its transformation into the mecha-like bipedal mode. The turbines died down as a safety measure to prevent accidental vertical takeoff, but Tails pressed a small button on the opposite side of the thruster lever from the afterburner, bypassing this. The craft rose into the air, slowly at first, but with increasing speed.

"You guys ready to go stupid fast?" he said with a grin, looking back at the two girls. Tabitha nodded, her grip on her wooden staff tightening. Lèontine simply gave him another thumbs up. "Then here we go!"

He flipped the “Walker” mode toggle switch back to "flight", causing the engines to slowly rotate back to their horizontal layout. As the engines rotated, the craft began to accelerate slowly, then quickly as the engines reached their original configuration. Behind them, the Academy had already begun to shrink into the distance as the craft leaped forward, the turbines screaming for air as the craft’s acceleration plastered Tails into his seat. Within seconds, the craft broke the sound barrier and continued accelerating at a reduced rate as Tails eased off the throttle, coming to a smooth cruising speed. It was only then that he registered heavy breathing over the headset, followed by a sigh of relief.

"Wow, you weren't kidding!" Lèontine's voice rang from the headset, ecstatic. "I didn't even know anything could go this fast! The world's flying by so quick, it's completely blurred!"

Tails gave the control stick a hard yank left, putting the craft into a fast aileron roll that punched him into the side of his seat. "Whooo!" he yelled with glee, pulling the stick back to pitch the craft completely vertical. The Tornado shot into the sky like a bullet as he opened up with the afterburner again, the whine of the turbines resonating through the craft’s frame.

"Where are we going?!" Lèo yelled over the mic in a panicked voice.

The fox looked back over his shoulder with a childish grin. "To space!"

The jet reached higher and higher into the skies, punching past one of the few clouds for miles around. Tails could slowly feel himself becoming lighter as the craft reached toward the exosphere, farther and farther from the planet’s surface. A brief yellow warning symbol popped up on the main screen, reminding him that the craft had just switched over to a stored oxygen supply. Minutes later, Tails disengaged the turbine-based propulsion and hit and hit a switch marked "CR Drive". The jet suddenly lost its mind-numbing acceleration as the turbines shut down, giving way to the more space-suitable “Chaos Radiation” ion-drive style propulsion.

"Alright, guys. Welcome to space," Tails said. A quick shift of the stick and the craft re-oriented itself perpendicular to earth, headed toward the twin moons partially obscured by the planet's curvature.

"Wait… what are stars if they aren't part of the sky?" Lèontine asked, her eyes wide as she took in the scene around her.

Tails let out a sigh. It hadn’t occurred to him that Lèontine might not know what stars were. "Balls of various vaporized elements that burn from nuclear fusion. When the cooler gas on the surface gets sucked back into the core by the star's own gravity, the pressure gets so strong that it fuses the atoms together into other elements like carbon, letting out a ton of heat and light, as well as speeding them up. When the outer layers get used up and the pressure in the core of the star gets high enough, it explodes outward and begins the process again with a new element, like carbon. Eventually it gets too dense and the star either explodes too violently for it to recollect, called a supernova, or never explodes and stays a small dwarf star."

Tabitha nodded quietly, thoroughly fascinated despite not understanding half of what the fox had just explained. The twin moons grew closer and closer as the craft continued to accelerate gently, unhindered by the atmosphere of the blue, ocean-coated earth below.

"I'll take you guys for a quick spin by the moons so you can get a closer look, and then we'll head back to Romalia. Sound like a plan?" Tails asked.

"Yeah!" Lèontine exclaimed. Her yellow-eyed gaze never left the planet below, enthralled by its grandeur and scale. "To think that we're just a tiny speck down there! I bet people haven't even been to half of the places we can see from up here… We need to go exploring when we get back, for sure."

"After we deal with whatever it is the Queen has for us in Romalia," Tails replied. As the Tornado hurtled toward the moons ahead, he pulled back on the controls gently to aim the nose of the craft toward the outer curvature of the closer moon, the smaller of the two. The jet came within meters of the moon's surface, hurtling past the craters and hills that pockmarked the surface of the lunar body.

"Why aren't we stirring up any dust? Is it all solid rock?" Lèontine asked, watching behind the craft in expectation of a massive dust cloud to erupt.

Tails shook his head. "There's no air here, so none of the kinetic energy of the jet gets transferred. Space is, in terms of normal matter as we know it, a void. Sound, kinetic energy, and some forms of heat transfer don't work out here." He let off the throttle a bit as the craft entered a series of small rock formations, weaving between the sparse structures with ease.

"No air? So if we were to step outside, we would…"

"Oh yeah," Tails replied with a laugh. "You would choke from the lack of air, freeze from having all of your body heat radiate away, burn from any thermal energy you take in from a star if you're too close, and if you somehow managed to survive all of that, be thoroughly irradiated and die within minutes as your body's cells just up and die. That's why you’ve got to wear very special suits to go spacewalking, stuff that I don't have here right now. Otherwise, you would be very, very dead."

* * *

 

The Tornado continued to traverse the smaller moon's circumference for several minutes as Tails rambled on about space and the physics behind it, until he decided to pull up and head back to the blue planet that had shrunken away behind them. "It's pretty cool, space travel," he remarked. "I wish I could take you guys on my Blue Typhoon. Then we could go visit other planets and stellar systems in the galaxy."

"What's that? Your 'Blue Typhoon'?" Lèontine asked.

"It's my capital ship. It's massive, dwarfs the Tornado here by a long shot. It used to be a ship I built to fight Eggman, a troublemaker in my home world and a bit of a rival engineer, you could say. My friends and I, we used it to travel worlds on our adventures. Good times. Hey, watch this!" Tails shut off the throttle and pulled back on the stick, firing up one of the thrusters near the nosecone. The craft began to flip backward, tumbling faster and faster toward the earth as gravity began to take hold in force.

"Ugh, Miles, make it stop!" Tails could hear Lèontine moan over the headset. "I think I'm going to vomit."

Hearing the key word "vomit", Tails jammed the stick forward to rapidly slow the craft's rotational motion, re-aiming the nose back toward the earth. "Sorry about that," he said. "Just got a bit carried away. It's been a while since I've had some free time in space. By the way, we're about to re-enter the exosphere, so if it looks like the craft is catching fire, don't panic, because we are."

The craft rapidly re-entered the exosphere, coming into contact with the first layers of ozone that tripped several sensors in the Tornado's nosecone. Tails switched back over from CR drives to standard turbines, listening to the large ducted fans spool up as air began to rush through their housings. With very little warning, the craft began to glow red-hot, followed by the burst of heat from air compression igniting on the front edge of the Tornado's surfaces.

Tails lowered the flaps slightly to aid in the jet's deceleration as he leveled the craft out, relying entirely on the feel of gravity and the various devices in the craft's control suite to guide him. Soon, the heat died down and the craft returned to its normal color, rapidly cooled by the sub-zero air that supported it.

Once full control of the craft was regained, Tails dipped the nose down a bit to begin his descent. "So, yeah. What you just saw was the Tornado moving so fast that it compressed the air in front of it enough to cause it to ignite from the heat of compression," he explained. "That happens a lot with re-entry from space, no matter what kind of ship you use. Now, off to Romalia I suppose."

The craft zipped down to the lower atmosphere, settling to an altitude just above the clouds headed in an easterly direction according to the Tornado's internal compass. "I suppose I should go ahead and give this a try," Tails thought to himself. He set the Tornado on autopilot and undid the latch on his wristcomm's strap, taking it off and setting it in his lap. Reaching for a small data cord stowed underneath his seat, he plugged in his wristcomm by a small data port on the underside of the device. A momentary flash of a symbol from the Tornado's control screen indicated that the device was synced, prompting Tails to cycle through the wristcomm's menu to the new program he had written back in his workshop, activating the Tornado's ground radar to begin scanning and uploading data to the little device.

"Cool, it works," Tails thought to himself with a grin. "Stuff like this almost never works on the first go…"

"Hey, Tails!" Lèontine called. "How long until we get there?"

Tails shrugged. "Who knows? If I knew where I was going, probably only a few hours, tops. We DID go into space on one end of the planet and come back in almost a third of the planet’s circumference away. I'm just flying the general direction until we hit familiar territory. What, do you want me to land so you can get out and stretch your legs or something? We haven't been airborne for more than half an hour, I think…"

"No, I'm fine! I was just curious, that's all. I think I'm gonna take a nap to pass the time. Wake me when we're there."

Tails heard a small beep from his headset, indicating that Lèontine had just turned off her headset to fall asleep. He let out a short yawn himself before switching back to manual controls, taking the stick in hand to control the craft. "So, Tabitha, do you recognize any of this landscape?" he asked. He waited patiently but got no reply, prompting him to look over his shoulder. Tabitha was fast asleep, her head resting against the side of the glass canopy. "Probably lulled to sleep by the turbines' noise," he thought to himself. "Well, I'll just figure out where to go from here on my own, I guess."

"Hey, you've still got me down here," Ring replied in Tails' mind.

"Yeah, I expected that. Let me know if you sense anyone, or even just a bunch of people that might be a town of some sort. I can land and get directions to Romalia so we make it there before lunch, hopefully."

"Sure thing, bro. Mind if I jump into the Tornado and take her for a spin?"

Tails released the controls and gestured to the control panel. "Be my guest. Just don't get us killed."


	88. Season 4 Chapter 5

After several hours of cruising around the continent at supersonic speeds, with a few stops for directions, Ring finally managed to locate the capitol of Romalia. The Tornado streaked through the sky over the glimmering seaside city, multitudes of canals that crisscrossed the city glimmering back at them in the sunlight. "Beautiful place!" Tails thought to himself. "I can see why everyone wanted to come here. Now, where to land…"

After a moment of scanning the city, he noticed a small courtyard near a large central cathedral that seemed relatively unpopulated. "I'm sure no one will mind if I drop down here," he thought. As the Tornado rocketed past the landing zone he'd picked, Tails retook control of the craft as Ring hopped back into his scimitar. He killed the throttle and brought the craft around, switching into Walker mode to come to a hovering stop just above the courtyard. With a brief flare of the throttle to slow its descent, the craft gently sank to the ground, touching down in the soft grass with hardly a jolt as the craft took the minute shake with ease. He killed the engines and popped the canopies, his seatbelt automatically unlatching and retreating to their corners.

He stood up in his seat, stretching to pop his back and tails. "Alright, guys, we're here!" he announced, turning to find that both girls were still fast asleep. He stepped out on top of the Tornado’s fuselage and gently nudged Tabitha’s shoulder with his tail. At once, her eyes popped open and began scanning her surroundings before noticing Tails, locking eyes with him.

"This is Romalia, I presume," Tails said with a smile, helping her stand up out of her seat. "I'll just wake up Lèontine and we'll be on our way."

Tabitha nodded and took a moment to massage her neck while Tails walked over to Lèontine and gave her a nudge as well. Deep in sleep, she simply allowed her head to roll a little bit and let out a light snore in response. "She must be extra tired for being human for so long," Tails thought. "I'll just let her sleep a little longer."

Tails turned back to Tabitha and helped her down off of the Tornado's taller Walker form, standing tall on its “feet”. “Lèontine's knocked out cold, so lets just let her sleep a while longer before we go find the Queen. I dunno about you, but I'm starving!"

"My bag, please," Tabitha replied, nodding in agreement. Tails climbed back up on the Tornado and popped the latch on the fourth seat, retrieving Tabitha's bag. "I'll go ahead and just leave this behind, as well," he thought, undoing his cloak and leaving it in the bag's place. "it's a bit warm for it, with fur and all."

Pressing the seat compartment shut, he hopped down off of the Tornado and handed the bag to Tabitha, which she hung from her shoulder. "So, where to?" he asked.

Without a word, Tabitha took Tails' arm and took off, only slowing down to let him get into her walking pace. Raising his wristcomm, he took a moment to remotely close the pilot's canopy before stepping out of the courtyard, into a large garden area with several small paths leading through wide swaths of flowers to a main main path headed straight for an entrance gate. The two followed a path to the gate and stepped out into the busy street beyond, crowded with civilians going about their daily business. Only the occasional clack of wood on stone of Tabitha's staff rose above the bustle of the streets that filled Tails' ears.

"Where are we going, Tabitha?" Tails asked, looking at the several shops and houses that lined the streets. "I'm not smelling much in the way of food here."

Tabitha simply kept quiet and led on, pulling Tails through the streets until they finally reached the first canal in the grid. A small café was nestled at the corner of a bridge by the waterside, catching Tabitha's attention. "Here," she said, gently pulling him toward the door.

"Sounds good to me. Have you been here before?" he asked. Tabitha shook her head in response. Looking over a small chalkboard sign out front with some unintelligible writing on it, he reached forward for the door and held it open, following Tabitha inside.

Inside, the quaint little restaurant was populated, yet not too loud as customers leaned over the small circular tables, many idly swirling glasses of wine as they talked. Tabitha stepped up to the counter and placed her order while Tails looked over the menu chalkboard above the counter, browsing his options. "Must be a different language…” he thought as he looked over the board of illegible cursive writing, unable to decipher even a single word. “I'll have what she’s having," he conceded in defeat to the lady at the counter.

"Certainly!" she replied, jotting down his selection of a piece of paper. She then removed a small, square piece of wood with a large "37" burned into it in a fancy font. "Place this on the side of your table wherever you sit, please, so the waiter can find your table. Someone will be right with you to serve drinks."

Tails nodded and took the small plaque, looking around the room. "Outside or inside, Tabitha? Your call," he asked. Tabitha looked around the room, then pointed toward the door. "Too crowded," she said.

"Alright." He walked over to the door and stepped outside, holding it for Tabitha who walked out and took a seat at a small, decorative wrought-iron table in the shade of the café's outdoor awning near the canal’s edge. He took a seat across from her and set the number tile on the edge of the table, taking a moment to take in his surroundings. In the end, however, his eyes came to rest on her face once more; despite her typical stone-cold demeanor, her eyes seemed to smile on her lips’ behalf. "Beautiful day out today!" he remarked, looking away in embarrassment. "Flying was a blast, the weather’s perfect. I might try to get out again before the day ends, just go for a cruise."

Tabitha nodded and set her staff against the table's edge, placing her hands in her lap. "It was fun. Thank you," she said.

"Hey, no problem! I'm just glad I have someone to take with me nowadays. Sonic never wants to go, and Knuckles is too busy doing his whole "Master Emerald Guardian" deal to ever take a cruise. The only people that would go nowadays are Cream or maybe Marina, whenever I go visit her. They're usually pretty busy as well, though."

"Friends?" she asked, her tone changing a bit. He paid it no mind, simply nodding. "Yeah, old friends,” he said. “Cream is just someone I came to know because Sonic saved her from Eggman once, and Marina was someone we bumped into while fighting Eggman on a different occasion. She's a bit of a rival mechanic, in a way, but she focuses mostly on aquatic craft while I do aeronautics and astronautics. The last time we really overlapped on a project was when I did a refit on my old submarine."

Tabitha nodded, sitting back in her chair. Behind her, a waiter stepped out of the café with a tray of glasses, turning to face their table. "Here are a couple glasses of water to start you off," he said, placing two tall, cylindrical glasses in front of them. "Is there anything else I can fetch you before your meals?"

Tails looked at Tabitha before deciding to go first. "Would you happen to have iced tea?' he asked. The waiter gave him a look of curiosity and confusion, thoroughly confused by the concept. "Sir, tea must be brewed in hot water to have any effect… I'm not quite sure what you are asking."

"Oh," Tails replied, shrugging. "Then, just a black tea with mint, if you have that."

"Certainly! And for you, madam?"

Tabitha took a moment before responding. "Cabernet sauvignon, house bottle," she replied. Tails just about spit out the water he had started to take a sip of, quickly swallowing and coughing into his arm as the waiter walked off with the order. "Tabitha, what the heck! You're only fifteen, and you're drinking?! It's not even dinner yet!"

"Nobility learn to drink at ten," she replied impassively. The waiter returned with a mug of tea and a long-stemmed glass of wine, setting them gently on the table. "Your meals will be with you shortly," he said before walking off.

Tails finished sucking down his glass of water before taking his tea, grabbing the small sprig of mint on the side of the teacup saucer and plucking the leaves to drop into the tea. Without warning, Tabitha gently picked up her staff and chanted a short spell, creating a small ice shard out of moisture in the air that plinked into his empty water glass.

"Hey, thanks Tabitha!" he said, gently pouring his tea into the glass. "I guess the idea of iced tea doesn't quite make sense to everyone around here. Probably not too common." He let the golden-brown liquid's temperature drop low enough to form condensation on the glass before taking a sip, instantly regretting his decision. "Whoo, man," he said, chuckling slightly.

She looked at him inquisitively. "Is it wrong?" she asked.

The fox shook his head. "It's not your fault, I should have seen it coming. Some of the water in the air here is sea spray, and has salt in it. Salty tea caught me off guard, that's all."

Tabitha blushed in embarrassment, setting her staff against the table once more. "I'm sorry," she said, looking down at her lap.

"Hey, I said it's not your fault. It's not bad, it just caught me off guard, that's all. Just enjoy your wine and don't worry about it."

After a moment of silence, Tabitha let out a short giggle, holding up the back of her hand to cover her mouth. The laugh was contagious; Tails soon found himself laughing alongside her, taking another sip of his salt-tainted tea to quell his chuckling. “God, she has a beautiful laugh. I wish she did that more often,” he thought as he looked down at the small piece of wood with their order number on it, secretly watching her idly swirl the crimson liquid in her wineglass in his peripheral vision.

* * *

 

Soon, the waiter brought out their dishes and disappeared back into the café, leaving the two to eat in silence. Lunch passed without as much chatter, leaving the two to finish their meals relatively quickly as the café crowd slowly filtered back out into the streets. When they were finished, Tabitha collected her staff and stepped back inside the café to pay for the meals before joining up with Tails and heading off down the street along the canal.

A thought popped into Tails' head, spurring him to start playing with his wristcomm. "While we're here, I should probably boot up the Chaos Emerald radar and take a quick look around," he thought.

Almost as soon as the radar booted up, it began loudly chirping at him, indicating that an Emerald was close. He broke free from Tabitha's grip and darted forward, using his change in position to let the program get a general bearing on the Emerald's location. As soon as the small onboard computer had done the calculations, a bright green arrow pointed him down the street and to the right a ways. "Must be in one of these stores," he muttered.

He waited for Tabitha to catch up to him before resuming his walk down the street at her side, keeping a watchful eye on the arrow on the wristcomm's screen. After several stores, the radar's arrow pointed directly to Tails' right, at a jewelry store that the two were about to pass. "Oh, man, you gotta be kidding me," he muttered to himself, looking over at Tabitha. "Mind if I take a peek for a sec?"

Tabitha shook her head and followed him into the store. "Welcome!" a greeting lady said with a bow toward Tabitha. "Is there anything I can help you with, madam?" Tabitha simply pointed at Tails, turning her attention to the fox with a cheap smile. "Ah, well then… how can I help you?"

"We're looking for a colored gem, about this big," Tails said, making a rough estimate of a Chaos Emerald's shape with his hands. "Could be any color, but a pretty specific cut. Very fine, almost unnaturally so. Glows, so it's pretty hard to miss. Anything like that?"

The greeter lady nodded, gesturing toward a door in the back. "Right this way," she said, walking off toward a back door behind the shopkeeper’s counter, the two following closely behind. "The gem you are talking about isn't actually ours anymore, however. It was a gem bought by a nobleman not too long ago, wanting it mounted on the end of an old, gold-plated cane he inherited. You are welcome to take a look, but it is not for sale unfortunately. How did you come to know it, may I ask?"

"Old friends, you could say. I’ve been following it for a while now," Tails replied.

The three stepped into the back room, where the mentioned staff was laid out on a workbench at the back of the dimly lit workshop. At its tip, a teal-colored Chaos Emerald glowed brightly, bathing the table with blue light. "You are welcome to take a closer look at the craftsmanship of the staff. It turns out the staff was originally a creation of one of our elder goldsmiths who has since passed away. However, his son still works here and I might say he's even better than his father. He's always ready to take work…"

Tails quickly checked his gloves before gently lifting the staff off of the workbench, looking at the mounts that held the Emerald in place on the staff. "As I thought, they couldn't drill into it so it's just a pressure fit…" he muttered to himself. Setting the staff back on the workbench, he turned back to the lady. "His work is great, but that's not what I'm here for today. Are you sure there's no way you can sell us the gem? We really need it."

The lady shook her head. "Again, it's been sold already. To a visiting duke. We would either need a heavy suspicion of illegal activity to withhold the sale, or permission from the duke himself, the Pope, or a superior of the duke's to cancel the sale. I am terribly sorry for the inconvenience, however I cannot reveal much more about the duke himself. I doubt he would be willing to sell it to you, he seemed rather fond of it."

"Shit," Tails swore under his breath. He gave a nod to the lady and said thanks before making his way to the door, but Tabitha stopped him. "Where is this duke from?" she asked.

"Gallia. I can't tell you any more about him or I might get in trouble. We have a confidentiality policy that-”

Tabitha removed her bag from her shoulder and fished around in it for a moment before retrieving a small ring, showing it to the lady.

The lady gently took the ring and held it under the workbench light to inspect it. "This is… The Gallian royal crest!" she exclaimed. "How did I not recognize the staff! Of course! Well, then I'm presuming you're giving authority to cancel his purchase?"

Tabitha nodded, receiving the ring from the lady once more and setting it back in her bag. "Very well, then I can have the gem dismounted in a couple days, when our goldsmith comes in and works through his current orders. We can have the gem ready to sell a few days after th-"

"No need, I can get it done right now," Tails said, tapping a button on his wristcomm to bring up his T-Buster. He switched it over to plasma-cutter-mode and began to approach the staff, but the lady was quick to intervene. "Sir, I can't let you touch that staff. We need our goldsmith to work on it or you'll damage the work, the gem is firmly mounted inside and can't be removed!"

Tails laughed. "Pardon my outburst, but firmly mounted my twin-tailed rear. I know that gem like the back of my hand, and there’s not a thing on this planet that could cut or drill into one of those. Give me two seconds and I'll have that Emerald out of there and we'll be out of your hair. Watch."

Tails stepped past the lady and waved the plasma beam near the gold for a split second, rapidly heating the metal. He stowed his T-buster and grabbed the Emerald as firmly as he could with one hand and the staff in the other, giving the Emerald a firm yank. Without much effort, the Emerald popped out of the staff, completely undamaged. "See? Not so hard. The staff's totally fine. So how much do we owe you for the Emerald?"

The lady stared at him, dumbfounded. "Uhh… I don't know, I don't deal with pricing gems, let me get someone for you. Be right back." She turned and stepped out to the main show floor, leaving Tabitha and Tails in the back room. Tails let out a slight smirk, tossing the Emerald into the air. "Got another one!" he thought to himself.


	89. Season 4 Chapter 6

After several minutes of quiet haggling between Tabitha and an appraiser, an agreement was reached and Tabitha shelled out a hefty stack of gold coins. The two quickly exited the store with the Emerald in Tails' hand, making their way down the street.

"Thanks for that, Tabitha. I know it must have cost you a ton, and exposed you as a princess, which I guess is something you were trying to avoid," Tails said, watching the blue emerald's pulsing glow.

Tabitha remained silent, only taking Tails' hand to walk with him. Suddenly, the fox let out a soft laugh, looking over at Tabitha. "Sorry, this just reminded me of an old memory. Back when I was on a different world, my friend's dad actually found a Chaos Emerald in a jewelry store just like we did, and bought it as a gift for his wife. I remember how shocked we all were when he brought it home, totally excited that he'd just bought such a great gift but totally ignorant of what it was."

Tabitha nodded and looked over at the Emerald for a moment, also captivated by its serene glow. "It's beautiful," she said in her usual quiet voice.

"Yeah… Sometimes I just sit and stare at them for a moment when I'm taking a break from my work and have one on hand. Five more to go, and I'll be able to return home! I'm excited just thinking about it! I'll have to build a new warpgate, big enough to fit the Tornado and all that, which means I should probably get started soon on the construction if we keep up the pace on finding the Emeralds…"

Tails snapped out of his scientific fantasy, noticing that Tabitha was looking away, her gaze focused on some distant point down the road. "What, is something wrong?" he asked. Tabitha shook her head, but didn't show any emotion. "Well, alright. We should probably get headed back, Lèontine should be awake by now, probably wondering where we are."

The two walked silently through the streets, twisting along the grid of the city back to the courtyard. To Tails' surprise, Lèontine was still asleep in her seat, her head occasionally tossing and turning across her seat's headrest. Tails climbed up on the Tornado and tried waking her once again with a light tap on the head. "Hey, Lèo, it's time to get up! Come on, we gotta go see the Queen."

After a bit of effort, Lèontine finally woke up, groaning and rubbing her eyes. "Ugh… what time is it?" she asked.

"No clue, I don't have an accurate clock, but it's past lunch. We'll get you something after we see the Queen. You ready to go?" he asked in return.

Lèontine nodded and stood up from her chair, a little unsteady from just waking up. She stepped over to the side of the craft and allowed Tails to help her down, taking her packet of clothes that he handed down to her afterward. "Thanks," she said.

Tails quickly snatched his chevalier's cloak and affixed it to his neck before hopping down from the craft to stow the new Emerald in its slot alongside the white Emerald. He shut the hatch to the Emeralds and turned to face Tabitha and Lèontine who waited patiently. "Alright, who knows where we're supposed to go?" he asked. "Otherwise, I guess we start asking around."

When neither of the girls offered an answer, he decided to take the lead and started walking back out to the garden paths with the two girls following him. Eventually, the three managed to come across a nun-looking lady that was dressed in a white garment with various cross-like decorations and a matching headdress.

"Excuse me, miss?" Tails called out to catch her attention. "Where could we find Queen Henrietta from Tristain? We're on orders to meet her here in Romalia."

The nun lady, who turned out to be a rather young girl, turned to face Tails and gave him a quick look-over. "Lady Henrietta is visiting with his Holiness at the moment. I would be honored to lead you to their meeting room, where you could wait outside for them if you would like," she offered.

"That'd be great!" Lèontine replied. The nun girl nodded and began walking, gesturing for the three to follow her. She led the three through several smaller courtyards and hallways to a side-entrance to the main cathedral. Inside, the massive hallway stretched in two directions from the corner the door was situated on, well lit by hundreds of wall-mounted candles. The nun continued to walk silently over the rug-covered halls, finally stopping in front of a set of double doors. "I do not know when they will be concluding their business talk, unfortunately. However, you are welcome to wait as long as you like here," she said, gesturing to an ornate, cushioned bench a few feet down the hall on the opposite wall.

"Thanks for your help," Tails said, taking a seat on the bench. Tabitha and Lèontine took a seat on either side of him as the nun made herself scarce, taking off back to the door they had entered the cathedral through. The three sat in awkward silence as Tails tried to think of some conversation piece to break the silence and pass the time.

"Hey, Lèontine," he said, coming up with an idea. "I was just thinking about it, and was wondering, what can you do, fighting-wise? Sylphid can do wind magic, as I understand it, but I don't remember you doing any when we were fighting that big iron golem a few days ago. "

"Yeah… Magic isn't my thing, really," she replied, blushing and straightening out her skirt in embarrassment. "I can use magic, but I'm not very good at it. I'm better at hand-to-hand combat."

"Oh?" Tails said, giving her a curious look. "What kind of fighting? Using weapons?"

Lèontine shook her head. "No… well, sorta. Here, just watch." She rolled up her right sleeve and closed her eyes, holding her right hand out palm-up. With a brief flash of light, her right arm reverted to its muscly, feather-covered state, with her hand now a bony claw tipped with razor-sharp talons. "I can choose which parts to revert to my griffin form, so I can shred someone pretty badly if I get close."

Tails let out a low whistle, watching Lèontine's powerful muscles ripple below the layer of feathers. "Yeah, no kidding. Jeez, that'd really mess up someone's day."

"Yup! What about you? You're really smart, but what else can you do?"

Tails shrugged. "Alone, I can fly, but that's about it. I've learned how to fight over the years, and I'm pretty good at improvising weapons on the fly if need be, but I mostly leave the heavy work to my gadgets like the Tornado or my T-Buster. With the Chaos Emeralds, or when I'm… really mad, you could say, I can do a lot of other stuff." He took a moment to rack his brain of his memories Emerl had given him before continuing. "…Survive in hostile environments like space, slow time, teleport, heal myself and others, cause explosions, and general super-strength. I haven't mastered them all yet, since there's a lot of stuff I haven't learned from my friends that have had more experience using the Emeralds, but maybe someday."

Now it was Lèontine's turn to be impressed. "Wow, that's pretty intense. All that power from those little stones in your plane?"

"Mhmm, it's pretty crazy but that's how it is," Tails said. "There's a lot I've been able to learn about the Emeralds from studying them, but there's still a lot I just can't explain. I might not ever be able to, but that's the fun of science. It's all in 'how close can you get to explaining the mysteries of the universe?' and stuff like that. Endless puzzles that unlock more puzzles when you complete them."

Lèontine re-transformed her arm back to its normal form and rolled down her sleeve. "Should we just knock on the door and see what happens? This could be a while, and they may not even be in there for all we know."

Finally, Tabitha spoke up. "No, don't," she said, her gaze focused on some point down the hall to her left. "Very disrespectful."

Lèontine looked over at the blue-haired girl. "Hey, we're on a job here, and the only thing keeping us from being done is a door. Rather, you saying we shouldn't open said door."

Tabitha turned to face Lèo, blue eyes locking with gold in a heated staring match. "Don't do it," she restated with emphasis, her soft voice rising slightly.

The two continued to stare at each other until Tails decided it was enough, gently pressing on both of their faces with his tails to push them back. "Cut it out, you two. Don't fight here, if someone saw us we'd look really bad on the Queen's behalf."

Without warning, Ring let out a deep laugh from his scimitar on Tails' hip. "Sorry, you sounded EXACTLY like Louise there for a second. Couldn't help it."

Tails thought about what he said for a moment before laughing a little. "Yeah, I guess you're right. She's the kind of person that wears off on you with just a little contact, I guess."

The meeting room door finally opened, causing the trio to jump out of their seats. Tails could hear Henrietta's voice inside, saying some final words that he couldn't quite catch. A small detachment of guards began to file out of the room, followed by Henrietta herself. He could see the queen's eyes light up with excitement as she caught sight of the trio.

"Tails, welcome!" she said, beckoning him over. "I wasn't expecting you here today, but I heard from the nuns and cathedral guards that attend the Pope that they found a strange machine that I assumed was yours. Since you are here, I can introduce you to pope Vittorio. Come!"

The three followed Henrietta back into the meeting room, where a man dressed in long, flowing white robes sat at the end of a large table, his stark blue eyes darting across the lines of text on the sheets of parchment before him. Several nuns and guards were attending to him, bringing him papers and refilling glasses and plates of snacks that had been emptied over the course of the meeting. "Your Holiness, I would like to introduce you to one of my best knights," Henrietta began, gesturing to Tails. "This is Miles Prower, familiar of the Gallian royal family, as well as the Zerbst family and my dear friend Louise of the Vallière family."

The white-clad man pushed back his chair and brushed his long, blond hair back over his shoulder before walking over to the four, extending a hand to the fox. "I've heard much about you, Miles!" he said, his voice like silk to the ears. "Quite influential, yes? Ties to four of the six leading families of Halkeginia is nothing to scoff at. Your reputation precedes you, and no doubt does not exceed you. I am Pope Vittorio Servare-saint Aegis the thirty-second. It's a pleasure."

Tails took his hand and gave it a firm shake, surprising Vittorio. "Oh, sorry. Bad habit," Tails quickly apologized, realizing his mistake. "Shaking hands is how we greet both in Saito's world and mine, so it gets the better of me every time someone extends a hand."

Vittorio looked at his hand for a moment in confusion, then recovered and gave Tails a smile. "Quite alright. So you are from another world as well? I heard that Louise's familiar Saito is also in the same situation. A bit like Julio, being a human familiar and whatnot."

"Yeah, I remember that," Tails recalled. "Pardon my asking, but why did you send him to defend Louise at the Academy? He sorta popped out of nowhere, so to speak."

"I had no better way to assure her safety than to send my Familiar to aid in her defense. She is a valuable Void Mage such as myself, as critical to our world as a government or food supply. I am inviting the known void mages here to this cathedral to arrange for a sort of peace conference, if you will. Everything will be explained tomorrow," Vittorio concluded. "Now, if you will excuse me, I have critical paperwork to attend to. I hope you can enjoy your evening in the city tonight. One of my fine devotees shall show you to your accommodations before you head out, if you choose to do so."

With that, the man stepped back, allowing one of the several attendant nuns to take his place while he continued some quiet, private conversation with Henrietta. The girl led the trio down several halls to a long corridor with several spaced rooms. "These three rooms shall be yours," she explained, pointing toward three doors on her right. "All of them are identical, so there have been no assignments made. There will be a morning devotional that you are welcome to attend, if you so choose. Have a wonderful evening."

The nun walked off down the hall, leaving the three to take their rooms. "Well, I'll just take this one, I guess," Tails thought, stepping toward the middle door. He opened the door and stepped into the room, shutting the door behind him. Inside, the room was rather plain, consisting of no more than a large bed, a single unornamented dresser, a candle-stand with a fresh candle, and a single empty flower vase set upon a bookstand accompanying a small booklet. "Makes sense if it's built for a nun, I suppose. Very utilitarian," he mumbled to himself, taking off Ring's sheath and setting him against the wall by the door.

Kicking off his shoes and peeling off his gloves, he walked over to the bed and flopped down, spreading out on top of the brown cotton quilt. "Wake me if something big goes on, I'm gonna take a nap before dinner," Tails said.

"Will do," Ring replied.


	90. Season 4 Chapter 7

Tails woke to the sound of knocking on his door, coming in evenly spaced sets of three. He rolled off of the bed and walked to the door, his padded feet making no noise on the plain wooden floor. He slowly opened the door, finding himself facing another nun.

"Good evening!" she said with a smile. "Dinner will be served in the central dining hall now, if you would follow me."

"Uhh, yeah, one moment please," Tails replied, ducking back into the room to grab his shoes and slip them on. "Should I wake up Lèontine and Tabitha?" he called out of the room to the nun.

"They are already awake and have been taken to the dining hall. You were the last one to wake up. Thank you for the offer, however," she replied. Tails slipped on his gloves and stepped out of the room to join the nun who was waiting patiently. "Right this way."

Tails followed the girl through the decorated halls of the cathedral, the scent of food growing stronger by the minute. Finally, the two arrived in a large banquet hall, with large tables lined with food and hundreds of nuns seated around them, waiting silently with their heads bowed as the Pope led some sort of prayer. Tails could see Tabitha and Lèontine seated in the center of the table on the far left of the hall, trying to catch his attention by staring at him. Tails nodded in response and began to creep silently across the hall, listening intently as the prayer came to a close. He took a seat on the left side of the two girls just as the prayer finished, followed by the loud rustling as every nun lifted their head in unison.

"I suppose that mean's it's time to eat," Tails said, eyeing one of the serving plates in front of him that contained several rabbit steaks. "I know Cream would probably hate me to the core for wanting to eat rabbit, but it looks so good!"

Tabitha nodded and began to serve herself from a bowl of greens as the army of nuns began to fill their plates. Tails took the chance to fill his plate and began to dig in, carving up a chunk of rabbit and taking a bite. "Oh, man! This is darn good," he thought to himself, quickly clearing his plate and filling it up for seconds. Some of the nearby nuns gave him an odd look, but quickly returned to their meals when Tails looked up from his own plate.

Lèontine gently elbowed Tails and nodded toward the Pope. "Is it just me, or do you find it a little creepy that all of the nuns are young women? I mean, I know it's probably part of the religion for devotees to be female, but where are the older women?"

"Yeah…" Tails said, taking a look around the room and noting all of the young faces of the women. "I didn't think about it, but you're right. That's pretty sketchy."

"Yeah, that's what I was thinking. Hey, I think I'm gonna go for a quick spin around the city, to stretch my wings a little before bed. You wanna come?"

"Sure, why not? I could use the exercise, I suppose. Hey, Tabitha, you wanna come with us?"

Tabitha looked up from the small booklet she was reading, the same kind of booklet in Tails' room. She thought about it for a moment before shaking her head, returning to her reading with intermittent bites of salad.

"Alright, whatever suits you," Tails said, returning to his nearly-empty plate to finish off the last of his rabbit steaks. "Lèo, I'll meet you outside by the Tornado when you're done. You remember where it is, right?"

Lèontine nodded. "I'll be out in a few minutes. See you there."

Tails hopped out of his seat and took his plate over to a small table where several nuns had started to pile their dirty dishes, then walked out of the cafeteria to the hallway. He slowly backtracked his way to the courtyard where the Tornado sat, glistening in the dying sunlight of the evening. "We're gonna have to figure out to get you home," he said to himself, patting the metal hull of the Tornado's right turbine. "It's good to have you back."

Bored, he took off his cape and flew up to the top of the Tornado's hull, using his wristcomm to pop the rear canopy. He carefully folded the black fabric into a neat square and set it on the fourth seat, plopping down into the third seat to wait for Lèontine. The waning sunlight slowly gave way to starry sky as he waited, passing the time by fiddling with a Power Ring he withdrew from his T-Buster.

Finally, Tails could make out Lèontine stepping out into the courtyard, her silhouette outlined in the bright light of the twin moons. "Hey, Tails!" she called, giving him a short wave. He stood up and hopped out of the Tornado, pressing the canopy shut with his hand. "Ready?" he asked.

"Yeah, one moment," she replied, beginning to strip down in the center of the courtyard. "Don't want to ruin Kirche's clothes when I change."

Tails covered his eyes until he could see a bright flash of light reflect off the polished metal of the Tornado below him. When he opened his eyes, Lèontine stood before him in her griffin form, her golden eyes seemingly glowing in the moonlight. "Do me a favor and put my clothes in your machine," she said, her voice filling the courtyard and reverberating off of every surface.

"Wait, you can speak now?" he replied, giving her an odd look. "I thought you couldn't speak when you’re a griffin?"

"I had Tabitha cast a translation spell on me before coming out. That's why I took so long."

Tails nodded and hopped down from the craft, picking up the stack of clothes that sat neatly folded on the ground near Lèontine's glistening-sharp talons. "I'll just leave this on your seat," he said, flying back up to the Tornado to open the rear canopy and set the bundle on the chair he had been sitting in. "By the way, take this so I don't lose track of you." He tossed the Power Ring he'd been playing with to her, watching her catch it in her beak. "It'll be easier to see you at night if I can see that Ring glowing."

"Sure," she replied, bending her head down to slip the Power Ring around one of her massive talons. "Are you ready yet?"

"Yeah, I'm good. Let's go!" Tails slammed the canopy shut and tapped a button on his wristcomm to activate his jet shoes, but nothing happened. Confused, he took a seat and took off his right shoe up to his face, opening the Power Ring storage slot in its heel.

Finding the slot empty, he slapped his forehead in embarrassment. "Of course! I forgot to replace them after escaping with Tabitha. Good thing I didn't find this out in a fight," he thought. He closed the slot, stood up and walked over to the front canopy, hitting the manual release to access the pilot's controls. Two quick button presses and the Tornado spat out two Power Rings from its reserves from a forward-facing launcher, sending them flying across the courtyard into a small hedge. He closed the glass bubble and hopped down from the Tornado, jogging over to the small bush to pick out the two glowing objects. The two Power Rings snapped into their slot with a soft click, their yellow glow disappearing as he closed the storage slot doors.

"That should do it," he thought aloud. He tried pressing the button on his wristcomm again, causing the jets to spring into life and launch him several feet into the air before coming to a stop. "Alright Lèo, I'm good to go!"

Lèontine leaped into the air after Tails, beating her massive wings rapidly to keep up with Tails as he gained altitude. The two rocketed into the night sky, coming to a level altitude far above the darkened, torchlit city below.

"I love flying!" Lèontine said, her booming voice echoing across the landscape below. "It reminds me how free we are when we aren't stuck to the ground."

Tails nodded. "Yeah, I get the same feeling when I get to travel in space. Ultimate freedom, unparalleled mobility, it all feels so good."

"Say, when are you going back to your world? How many of those gem things do you need?"

"Well, I need all seven, but I can't return right away. I'll have to find all the materials and build all the tools I need to build a warpgate, and only then can I return home. That's assuming we don't find some other way back before then, like magic."

Lèontine nodded. "I seem to recall reading about that kind of stuff in some old Gallian textbooks way back when. There were records of the previous Void Mages having lots of powers like that. Explosions, enhanced speed, teleportation, memory wiping, stuff that no one else had. Very few details or confirmed sightings, though. I don't remember the title of the book, either, if it even still exists."

"Well, up until the memory-wiping bit, that all sounds suspiciously like Chaos powers to me," Tails explained, coming next to Lèontine as they slowly glided over the city. "I suppose it's not unheard of that humans could control the Chaos Emeralds, but I've never seen it personally. Maybe that explains why Void mages are so rare, that it's just some special branch of magic that can tap into Chaos energies like we can use Power Rings. I'll see if I can do some testing with Louise later, maybe."

The two flew in silence for a minute before Lèontine continued. "Hey, Tails, I was wondering…" she began. "…can I come with you to your world when you go?"

Tails rubbed the back of his head, running through the series of events in his mind. "Well, normally I would say no, because there could be a risk of universes colliding like what happened with be and my friends in another universe, which has… explosive results, to say the least. But, since things have been dropping in from Saito's world and my own without any serious effects for years, I don't see why not."

"Aww yeah!" she exclaimed, doing a quick barrel roll in excitement. "Are there other griffins? What's your house like?... Will Tabitha be coming?" she added with a bit of hesitancy.

"I dunno about Tabitha," Tails replied with a shrug and a frown. "I'd love for her to come and at least visit for a while if not stay, but I just don't know… Her mother and all, you know. If she does really kill her uncle and we get her mother back, will her mom go back to normal? Would she have to take the throne of Gallia either way? I can't just take her away with me and leave an entire nation without a head of government. I'm sure she knows that, too."

"Well, all we can do is hope for the best that we can get her back to normal. If it's elvish magic, you're probably out of luck, but if it's anything from this part of the world, I might be able to take a look."

Tails nodded. "Thanks, it would mean a lot to both of us. She used to have nightmares about when her mother took the potion, you know. I think she still does, when I'm not around."

"That sounds harsh," Lèontine said. "She really wants her uncle dead over it, I'm guessing?"

"You know, I'm not really sure. Given how long this has been going on between the two of them, I would think Tabitha would have had at least ONE chance to get at him. No one can keep their defenses up perfectly for that long, right? Perhaps Tabitha was just waiting to be able to save her mother before making a move, but maybe not. She's never told me anything, so this is all just speculation."

The duo circled around the city once more, performing several aerial stunts before returning to the courtyard where the Tornado waited. Tails gently dropped to the ground, shutting off his rocket shoes and spinning down his tails. Lèontine followed shortly behind, impacting the patch of grass with a loud thud and skidding a short ways.

"One sec, let me grab your clothes," Tails replied, climbing up the leg of the Tornado to the rear canopy. He grabbed the stack of clothes out of the third seat and turned back to Lèontine, only to be blinded by the brief flash of light from her transformation. He jumped down from the Tornado and staggered over to her, rubbing his eyes with his free hand. The clothes slipped from his hand as Lèontine took them and began to get redressed.

After a minute of rubbing, his eyesight finally returned albeit his natural night vision still slightly impaired. He quickly turned his back on Lèo, who was only half-done getting redressed. "Sorry," she said, finishing up with the shirt. "Just not used to this yet. I never spent much time as a human before."

"It's fine," Tails replied. "The faster, the better. It'd be awkward if someone found us, that's all."

Lèontine giggled and surprised him with a quick hug from behind. "You're adorable, Miles Prower. It's like you've never had a girlfriend before. So logical and sensible, I feel like you don't know how to have fun sometimes!"

Tails broke away from her embrace, turning to face her with downcast eyes. "I did have a girlfriend before, thanks. It's just that I had to kill her to save my universe before we got anywhere."

"Oh," Lèontine replied, putting her hand up to her mouth. "I'm so sorry! I didn't know…"

"It's fine, what's past is past. I loved her, but she was never more than a friend until she passed. I haven't given up on bringing her back, but now that her seed has gone unattended for so long… I dunno if I'll still have a shot when I get back."

Tails began to walk toward the tall, sprawling cathedral, with Lèontine quickly catching up to walk beside him. "Hey, I just wanted to say thanks. For tonight, and for your permission to join you when you leave," she said, watching him as they walked.

"Yeah, it was fun," Tails replied, letting loose a small smile to break his bad mood.

"No, seriously, it means a lot," Lèontine continued, her voice fading to a low mumble. "I never had much of a family. I never knew any other Rhyme Dragons outside of empty names from rumored sightings, including my parents. Everything I've learned came from books I snuck out of a nobleman's library and kept in a den where I lived. You and Sylphid are the only sort of family I have."

Tails noted she was starting to tear up a little, but held it in as she walked. "Hey, that's okay. You've got me and Tabitha, and Saito and the others too," he replied. "I was the same way. I hardly knew my parents until me and my friends saved the city and de-roboticized them."

The two walked for several minutes through the empty hallways until they finally reached their room. Tails walked over to Tabitha's room and cracked the door, peering inside to check on her. From the back corner, he could hear some general mumbling and moaning that prompted him to investigate. He kicked off his shoes and walked in, taking a seat on the edge of Tabitha's bed. He took off his left glove and ran his hand over her forehead, stopping to remove her glasses and set them aside on the reading stand by the bed.

"Hey hey, it's okay Tabitha," he whispered, gently ruffling her hair a little to calm her down. He let out a soft yawn and looked back at the doorway, noticing that Lèontine was watching carefully. She kicked off her small brown dress shoes and walked in, standing over Tabitha with a watchful gaze. "Is she like this every night?" she whispered.

"Most nights, as far as I know. She was okay for a little while, but it's come back after seeing her mom while she was being held. You can head on back to bed if you like, I'm probably going to spend a while here to make sure she gets to sleep properly."

Lèontine shook her head. "I'll stay, if you want to go back to bed. You'll need sleep for tomorrow's meeting."

Tails nodded, replaced his left glove and stood up to go fetch his shoes. "Thanks a lot. I'll see you in the morning," he said.

"Goodnight," she replied, laying down on the bed next to Tabitha. He picked up his shoes and stepped back out into the hallway, shutting the door behind him as slowly as he could. "Good to know she's at least trying to be nice to Tabitha. They seemed at odds with each other on the airship yesterday," he thought.

"They were," Ring said in Tails' mind. "They're fighting over you. Big time."

"They want me?" Tails thought, walking down to his room. "I… I guess I have feelings for Tabitha, yeah, but I can't make a decision like that just yet. But, I can't have them fighting, either. It's hard enough on Tabitha without her mom, but Lèo's pretty much in the same situation family-wise. You probably were watching us during that whole spiel, right?"

"No, I was trying to get some sleep 'till you barged in, thanks. Do you even know what time it is?"

Tails stepped into his room and kicked his shoes off, flopping down on the bed. "No, but sorry for waking you. I'm sure we'll be getting a wake-up call from a nun again tomorrow, so be ready. 'Night." He slipped off his gloves and stretched out, promptly falling asleep from exhaustion after the night's flight.


	91. Season 4 Chapter 8

Three sets of three knocks on the door disturbed Tails from his sleep, followed by Ring yelling in his mind. "Get up, dude! She's been knocking for ages."

Tails launched out of bed, unusually energetic. He walked over to the door and opened it just a sliver, finding yet a different nun waiting outside. "The meeting will be held over breakfast which will be beginning soon," she declared with a smile. "Your friends arrived very early this morning, and are already unpacked and seated in the dining hall. Your two accomplices you arrived with have also been taken to the hall already."

"Thanks," Tails said, opening the door wide. "One moment, let me fetch my stuff." He slipped into his shoes at the doorway before picking up Ring in his sheath and walking back over to the bed to fetch his gloves. When he was fully equipped, he straightened his wrinkled cloak he'd slept with, stepped out into the hallway and shut the door behind him, ready to go. The nun lead him back to the dining hall they had eaten at previously, but this time there were no nuns to be seen. Students of the Academy lined the food-laden tables in the room, quietly waiting for the announcement to begin while Tails took his seat.

The Pope stood at the front of the room, with Henrietta at his side behind the podium. "Alright, ladies and gentlemen," he began, raising his hands to ensure he had everyone's attention. "I'm sure you are all wondering why you are here. We," he said, gesturing to Henrietta, "…will be entering a new era of peace with Gallia. As you are aware, there have been some… disappearances, shall we say, on Tristain's side of the Gallian border. What you are most likely NOT aware of, however, is that we now know the locations, names, and affiliations of all four of the fabled mages of the Void."

At this, a murmur rippled through the crowd. "Now, now, it's no big secret that they exist," Vittorio continued, regaining the crowd's eyes. "In fact, three of them are in our presence at this very moment. Myself, and two students among you. One of which, I'm sure you know, is your very own Louise, of the Vallière family. Her powers as a Void mage were aptly demonstrated in the short conflict with Albion, as I am sure you are all aware. The third, surprisingly enough, was only recently discovered. Your most recent student, Tiffania Westwood!"

A collective gasp echoed in the room as all eyes scanned the room for her presence, but Vittorio raised his hands again to silence the room. "You won't find either of them here, at this moment. I have offered both of them a position in the Church so that I may train and further study their abilities for the times ahead. Now, the "peace conference" aspect of this event involves the fourth Void Mage, who is, unfortunately, on the opposite side of this Gallian conflict. A few days ago, I sent a letter to invite King Joseph of Gallia, the fourth Void Mage, to attend my coronation in order to meet with us here to resolve this conflict between Tristain and Gallia. I also hope to unify the four Void Mages at this meeting, so that we may work together to further humanity as it has in the past."

After a moment of silence, a wall of resounding cheers and applause filled the room, but Montmorency alone stood up and raised a hand, waiting for the room to fall silent. "So why are we here, your Holiness?" she asked, ending her question with a respectful curtsey.

Vittorio nodded. "A fine question! You are here, not only to witness the historic moments that will follow this day, but to act as a form of protection for the Queen should things, as the people say, go south. While some of her finest soldiers such as her Gunpowder Squadron and the reformed Griffin Squadron accompanied her here on this trip, our accommodations are limited. Magicians are much more effective at combat than the standard foot soldier, so we felt it reasonable to make the most efficient use of our accommodations here in the cathedral. Any more questions?"

In the back corner, Gimli stood up and raised his hand. "What exactly was stolen from the upstairs storeroom last night?"

Tails gave Gimli an incredulous glance, but Vittorio nodded again and gave him another smile, this time looking a little fake. "While we aren't quite sure, as there were many things stored in that room, I believe it to be no more than some simple artifacts. Nothing that poses a threat to this meeting, to be certain. While the thieves were well-equipped with magical tools of their own, we believe them to be no more than thieves intending to make a few coins on the black market. While I am sure there are more questions to be answered, our food grows cold. Let us eat, and then we may resume."

The silence that had taken over the crowd during the speech dissolved as the students began to load their plates, returning to idle chatter about their trip. Tails took a wide selection of the dishes available and began to chow down, listening to the tales and stories that flew across the table around him as he ate…

* * *

 

King Joseph sat idly at his throne, gently rolling one of the translucent, crimson orbs in his hand. "Sheffield, did you manage to bring everything we needed before we came?" he asked.

"Yes, my lord," the purple-clad lady said, kneeling before the king before her. "Vitartial was able to make several fire-stones before we packed up and left, no less in quality than the one you now hold."

"And your allies? What was their response to your appeal?" he said, grunting to clear his throat from breakfast.

"They were unwilling at first, but the reward you offered made them more than willing to cooperate," she replied. "They seemed quite interested in the gems, although their reasoning is still arcane to me."

Joseph nodded. "Good! I'm sure they will be a valuable asset. What about the key?"

"Of course. The sleeping potions still hold her silent in her bed. I'm sure they will respond to the offer, should our allies fail."

"Very well. Summon those four mercenaries. Have them bring me the Mirror from the hold, and then inform them of their mission. We have only hours until our arrival, so let them be swift. Go."

Sheffield stood up and gave King Joseph a final bow before heading off to the bunks in the lower levels of the airship. Happy with his preparation's outcomes, he went back to idly staring at the red orb in his hands. "This will be the last mistake you ever make, Vittorio. Your insanity has gone on long enough. Time for a new king!"

* * *

 

After the meal, Tails bussed his plate and slowly made his way outside. On the way, he noticed Louise and Tiffania standing among a group of nuns, dressed in the same white and gold attire that the clergy wore. "Hey, they weren't kidding when they said you became a nun!" he joked, walking over to the group of girls.

Louise gave him a haughty look. "Why would they be joking? Becoming part of the clergy is a very big deal, and takes a lot of responsibility! I would think you would show some respect to our religion, but I guess you're more insensitive than I thought."

Tails grinned and raised a hand in surrender. "No, I know it's a big deal. I was just a bit surprised when I heard it, that's all. Congratulations!"

"Thank you!" Tiffania said, giving him a brief hug. "It means a lot to us."

"Yeah, I'm sure your parents would be proud," Tails said, returning the embrace. "Must be a bit of a shock, going from living in the woods to being a nun in a big city, a Void Mage, AND a cousin of the Queen in only a short time!"

Tiffania shook her head. "It's a big change, yes, but what I've always wished for!" she replied, stepping back to her group of friends. "It's a great feeling, really."

"Alright, well I'm probably gonna go for a walk in the city. I'll see you later!" Tails said with a short wave. He turned around and continued back out into the hall, heading out through the side courtyard where the Tornado sat to the main gate.

"Hey Tails, wait up!" he heard a voice call out from behind him. He turned to see Lèontine jogging over to him, with Tabitha walking not too far behind her. "You thought you could ditch us to sit around and be bored while you went into town?"

"I figured you two would catch up eventually," he replied. "I was just gonna go browse the shops for a few hours until something happens. The Pope said something about a coronation, right?"

"Yup! His second or third re-coronation, I think. That's what I overheard from one of the nuns on the way here, anyways," she said. "By the way, the Queen stopped me and asked for me to give this to you." She handed him a small brown pouch, held closed with a set of drawstrings. He gently tugged open the mouth of the pouch, finding a large handful of gold coins glowing back at him in the sunlight. "She said it was your wage as one of her knights, and that she had forgotten to give it to you at the castle earlier this week."

Tails nodded and tied the pouch to Ring's sheath by the drawstrings. When Tabitha caught up with the two, they stepped out into the busy streets beyond the main gate and allowed themselves to be swept away by the natural foot traffic. They passed several small stores until one finally caught Tails' eye, a small bookstore with a display case holding several titles in the window. "Hey guys, can we duck in here for a minute? I'd like to pick something up for while we wait through the coronation."

The three stepped into the small bookshop, greeted by the musty scent of parchment and book-binding glue. Tails instantly ducked off into what appeared to be a reference book section, scanning the various texts for anything that appealed to him. He selected two texts on the subject of magic and one on the history of Halkeginia before reporting back to the counter, setting the books on the wooden table in front of the cashier.

"Just these three?" the elderly man asked, lifting the books close to his bespectacled eyes to read the spines. "These are pretty advanced texts. Are you sure these are what you need?"

"Yessir, they're just what I need," Tails said. "Also, I'll be paying for whatever the two girls I came with bring up. Give me a second, I'll go check on them." He walked back to the aisles of books, finding Tabitha seated on a small reading chair with her staff clamped between her knees and a book on her lap.

"Hey, Tabitha," Tails said, catching her attention. "Whenever you're ready to go, I've got my books up front. I'll pay for it if you want to buy something."

Tabitha nodded and closed her book, rising to her feet with her staff in hand. "I'll take this, thanks," she said, taking a moment to readjust her glasses.

"Where's Lèontine?" he asked. She pointed to the back of the aisle, where Tails could see another wall of books formed the back of the shop. He peeked around the corner to find Lèontine standing on top of a small three-rung stepladder on her tiptoes, trying to reach the top shelf.

"Hey Lèo, whenever you're ready to go, Tabitha and I have our books and are ready to move on," he said, watching her reach for a specific book. "Do you need some help with that?"

"No, I've got it," she replied, her fingers barely able to touch the spine of the book. "Almost there…"

She stepped forward on the ladder, her toes barely on the edge of the topmost step. Tails could see her the ladder shake a bit and moved to set his foot on its first step to stabilize it when her shoes lost traction and slipped. She began to fall backward, but he moved in to catch her while using his tails to brace himself against the shelf unit behind him. She winced in pain for a moment as he caught her, helping her to the ground. "You okay?" he asked.

Lèontine nodded. "Yeah, just slipped. My leg scraped the edge of the ladder, that's all. Nothing serious, thanks." She tried to stand up, but immediately shifted to her left foot, momentarily placing her hand on his shoulder. "Must be sprained or something. I felt it get caught between the edge of the ladder and the shelf when I fell."

Tails nodded and looked up at the top shelf. "I don't think I could get it by flying in this cramped space…," he thought. "Oh, I've got an idea!"

At this point, Tabitha had rounded the corner to see what the commotion was, staring idly at the fox as he gestured toward his back. "If you can't reach it, maybe I could hold you up for you to reach it and we'd be tall enough, combined. I can't fly because it's too close to the ceiling for my tails to clear, and my rocket shoes would make a mess."

Lèontine nodded. "Yeah, sure!" She let Tails pick her up piggy-back style before stepping up on the ladder, using his tails to balance himself. "Can you reach it?" he asked.

"A bit farther than before. Can you go any higher?"

"Maybe, one second," he replied. He let go of her right leg and positioned his hand underneath it, repeating the process with his left hand and hoisting her up onto his shoulders with great effort. "Got it… yet?" he asked, taking a deep breath as he tried to regain his balance.

"Yup!" she said. "One sec, I see one just to my left I think I can reach that I'll take as well…"

Tails could feel her lean to her left as he struggled to maintain balance. "Almost there… Hey, thanks Tabitha!" she said. "Ok, Tails, you can let me down now. Thanks!"

Tails slowly stepped down from the ladder and knelt down so she could get off his shoulders. He looked up to see Tabitha pointing her staff at a levitating book that Lèontine plucked from the air. "Oh, well why didn't I think of that first," he thought to himself.

"Is everything okay back there?" Tails could hear the old storekeeper call.

"Yeah, we're fine! Be right there!" he replied as Lèontine passed him. He followed her to the front as she walked to the counter, limping slightly to avoid putting weight on her right foot. She set her books on the counter next to Tails' stack, followed by Tabitha's books to form a third stack. The old man sorted through the books slowly, evaluating each book by looks for a moment before pausing to run a sum in his head.

"That'll be… two gold and three silver, total," he said. Tails removed three gold coins from his purse and laid them out on the table, watching as the old man swiped them from the surface and quickly inspected them before digging into his cashbox below the table for change. He removed six silver coins from his box and laid them back out on the table. "Thank you very much! Have a good day!" he exclaimed, happy with the purchase.

"And you," Tails replied, sliding his books off the counter. He stepped just outside the door and waited for the two girls to collect their books. Outside, the foot traffic had increased slightly as people began to make their way to the cathedral to get the best spot for viewing.

"Dang, bro," Ring said in Tails' mind with a snicker. "I'm surprised you didn't chicken out. My little fox is growing up!"

"What are you talking about?" Tails thought back.

"Oh, don't you bullshit your way out of this one. You knew what you were doing!"

Tails looked down at the sword on his hip and gave Ring a look of confusion. "Explain, please."

"Come on! You're telling me you didn't do that to cop a feel? That whole scenario you set up was perfect! Your head was right in the ZONE, man! Physically, I mean. There probably isn't a guy alive who wouldn't kill to experience what you just felt. How were her legs?"

It took a moment for the idea to register, causing Tails to give Ring a disgusted face. "You sick little turd, Ring. I should melt you down and turn you into… I don't even know, it's all too good for you."

Ring laughed. "You forgot the L in slick. Work on your spelling."

Tails looked up to see Lèontine and Tabitha waiting patiently, causing him to blush under his facial fur. "Uhh… Hey Lèontine, do you know how long until the coronation begins?" he asked, trying to distract himself.

"No, not really. I would guess an hour or two before noon, but I heard it was going to rain this afternoon from the same nuns I heard about the coronation from," she replied. "They were afraid it would mess up the decorations if the Pope didn't move it ahead of schedule."

"Maybe there's a memo we didn't get," he thought. He took a right and began meandering down the street with the two girls just behind him, back to their idle walk. "We should try to be picky about what shops we stop at if it's going to rain, then," he said. "Anything specific you guys want to see?"

"A gondola ride," Tabitha said, only barely audible over the ambient noise of the street.

Lèontine nodded. "Yeah, that'd be fun! I'm not sure where we would get on, though. Maybe you just stop one when it passes by?"

"Maybe. Let's just head to that canal by the café we stopped at and maybe we'll get one," Tails said.

The trio walked with the flow of the crowds back to the café by the stone bridge where Tails and Tabitha had eaten previously, following the road along the water's edge in the opposite direction of the jewelry store. It wasn't long until they found a passenger-free gondola tied to a post built into the canal wall. A spry young man was stretched out inside, his upper face covered by a wide-brim hat pulled over his head. A small cigarette-looking roll hung from his mouth, filling the air with a sweet, smoky scent as it burned.

"Excuse me, mister," Lèontine said, leaning over the water's edge to look down into the boat at the man. "Can you give us a ride?"

The boatman pushed back his hat and cracked an eye open to get a good look at his new customers, subtly eyeing Lèontine. "Eh, it's my smoke break, but for a pretty lady like you, why not? Hop on in." He stood up in the boat and grabbed the tie-up post to hold the boat steady while the three stepped in. "You three ever been to Romalia before?"

"I think they have, but this is a first for me," Tails said, taking a seat in the middle of the boat. "We're part of Queen Henrietta's entourage, so we should probably be back to the cathedral before the coronation starts."

"Good to hear! I'll keep the tour short and point out the big things for ya, and let you enjoy the rest of the ride. But, I need cash up front," the boatman said, extending a hand toward the fox. "Six silver, please."

Tails began to fish around in his bag to find the six silver he'd been given in change, but decided to just toss him a single gold. "Since we made you miss your break," he said.

"Hey, thanks bud!" the gondolier replied, tipping his hat and giving Tails a wide grin. He untied the boat and plucked his heavy oar from the side of the boat with surprising dexterity, pushing off from the stone wall of the canal with a gentle push. "Say, how did you come to know the Queen, Mister Fox? You don't look like an ordinary knight with that cloak, but you're… a familiar, right?"

Tails shrugged. "It's a whole jumbled mess, yeah. The Queen calls me her 'chevalier', or some kind of knight. On top of that, I'm her familiar," he said, pointing at Tabitha, "… and she's my familiar," he added, now pointing at Lèontine. "I also actually have two more masters who aren't here right now."

"Yeah, that's a mess alright," the man said, pushing the boat along the river one stroke at a time. "Anyways, here's the start of the tour. If you look to your right..."


	92. Season 4 Chapter 9

The tour went on for roughly an hour, with the young gondolier pointing out several points of interest and bits of lore while Tabitha took a nap on Tails' shoulder. Suddenly, a loud rumble in the distance caught Tails' attention. He looked around to find the source, noticing a large wall of dark clouds rolling in from the northwest. "Does the weather really change on a dime like this very often?" he asked. "It's been sunny ever since we arrived, so a heavy storm seems really out of place…"

"Oh yeah," the boatman said. "We can get some pretty crazy swings for half of the year, usually starting around mid-spring and ending in mid-fall. This one looks like it's gonna be a real hard-hitter, though. Hopefully there won't be any issue with flooding on any of the houses."

Tails gave him an odd look. "Flooding? Aren't the canals connected to the ocean?"

"Yeah, but it doesn't run off in some places. The whole place is slowly sinking, you know. When the center of each strip of land starts to sag inward, it can result in some heavy chronic flooding in those blocks when the rains get hard."

Another loud rumble filled the air, followed by some unusual percussive booms that worried Tails. "Sounds like some pretty heavy lightning. We'll need to be on our toes if it sets a house on fire," the boatman remarked.

"I dunno," Tails thought, looking over at Lèontine who was observing each passing shop. "That didn't sound like thunder to me. Sounded more like c-"

Without warning, the sound of screams and yells resounded across the city, followed by a brief shriek and a massive blast that shook the earth. Tails looked up to see a massive blaze engulf a shop in front of the boat, followed by more shrieks as dark objects sailed overhead in a blur. Ahead of him, he could see some obscured forms begin to step out of the blaze, dark and menacing.

And then, shit hit the fan.

The black aliens poured out of a hole in the flaming shop, laser rifles at the ready. One at the front of the group quickly turned on a nearby woman, frozen with fear, and grabbed her by the skull. One quick squeeze and her head fractured, knocking her out cold from the pain. It wasn't long until they began their first feast, devouring the lady in seconds as the four creatures ganged up on her and ripped her body apart limb from limb.

"Holy shit…" Tails mumbled, reaching over to Tabitha with an unsteady hand. "…holyshittabitha, wake up!" he whispered urgently, shaking her awake. The blue-haired girl slowly sat up and rubbed her eyes behind her glasses before focusing on the new invaders.

The gondolier began to rapidly paddle to the opposite side of the river, distancing himself from the aliens as much as possible."My god, those things just… ATE her! Sorry guys, tour's over. We gotta bail!"

By now, the aliens were finished with the lady and began to open fire into the fleeing pedestrians. One caught sight of the boat and let out a nasty roar, causing even Tabitha to flinch as the boat reached the opposite side of the canal. Without even a short run-up, the alien leaped the canal and began charging down the street toward the four as they scrambled out of the boat. Tails brought up his T-Buster and let out a high-voltage burst, dropping the creature like a sack of bricks. "Run!" he yelled, dragging Lèontine out of the boat.

The four had hardly made away from the first alien before the other three turned on the aggressors to avenge their fallen comrade. They leaped the canal and gave chase, closing the distance with frightening speed. Tails held his T-Buster behind him and opened up, dumping several lethal bolts behind him in a blind fire. A few hit their mark, dropping two of the three aliens with no more than a shot to the arm. The third managed to catch Lèontine in a final sprint, ripping her from Tails' grasp as it grabbed her by the throat and dragged her back.

"SONOVABITCH!" he yelled, leveling his T-Buster at the creature's head. However, he could see Lèontine give him a wicked grin, followed by a blinding flash of light.

By the time Tails recovered his vision, Lèontine held the monster's head in her griffin-strength iron grip, her sharp talons ripping into its face. She gave the monster's head a quick twist and dropped its lifeless body to the ground, grinning like a maniac all the while. "It's good to be back in business," she said, walking back over to the other three. "Tails, you care to explain what these are?"

Tails let out a sigh of relief, lowering his T-Buster. "I'll explain while we run. First, we need to make it back to the c-"

His statement was cut short by another earsplitting shriek as several more objects whizzed overhead, followed by earth-shaking explosions as they slammed into the city a few blocks away. "We need to get to the cathedral, fast," he continued, rubbing his ears. "These things will turn the entire city into a warzone in a matter of minutes, so we need to get everyone to regroup."

"What about me?" the gondolier asked, nervously scanning the streets for more aliens. "I can't fight these things, man. They ate that lady like a peanut!"

"Hide in a basement or room with a lot of food and water. The smell of food might obscure your scent. They only eat humans, so they might not search the building if they don't smell you," he explained, pointing at a restaurant that had been promptly abandoned. He turned to Lèontine and pointed to the sky. "Lèo, we need transportation. Care to?"

"With pleasure," she said, stepping back from the group. Another blinding flash of light filled the area, forcing Tails to cover his eyes with his arms. "Let's go!" Lèontine's voice boomed as Tails felt his way over to her, pulling Tabitha with him. He gave his eyes a final rub and hopped up on her feather-coated back, extending a hand to Tabitha. As soon as the two were onboard, Lèontine leaped into the air and began to beat her massive wings, slowly making her way to the white cathedral in the distance.

Tails looked down at the city to get a sense of the damage. From the air, he could spot at least eight separate impact locations, marked by burning buildings ignited from the impact of the drop pods. "Shit, thirty-two of these bastards are really going to mess up the city if the knights don't get on point," he muttered to himself.

"Alright, Tails. You said you would explain, so start talking," Lèontine said with a commanding tone.

"Those things you saw are called the Black Arms," Tails began. "We fought them on a variation of Earth a while back, but they're supposed to all be dead after Shadow nuked them all from orbit with the Eclipse Cannon. Clearly, that's not the case."

"Why?" Tabitha asked bluntly, her grip on her staff tightening.

"I dunno. This definitely isn't a full force or we'd be facing hundreds of thousands, so I think they're on orders to do something. Who's giving the orders, though, is anyone's guess."

Within minutes, Lèontine reached the cathedral and came to a skidding halt at the massive front doors. Overhead, the storm slowly began to cover the city, dumping sheets of rain over the city that obscured everything it covered. Knights were scrambling to the defenses as the Black Arms soldiers began to approach the cathedral gate, their laser rifle pulses flying.

"Shit, where's Saito?" Tails thought as he dismounted from Lèontine and headed for the main doors, pushing them open wide enough for her to squeeze through. Inside, a small infirmary was set up in the main hall where nuns were treating civilians and knights alike. A few shot odd glances at Tails as he ran up the aisles to the pulpit where Pope Vittorio waited, watching over the hall like a hawk.

"Hey, Mister Vittorio, where's Saito and the Queen?" he asked, looking around the hall. "It's pretty urgent that I get to him."

Another round of shockwaves shook the building, signifying more drop pods landing. "The Queen is safe in a deeper part of the cathedral. Your friend Saito, however, hasn't come back. I would guess he's taken a position at the gate like the rest of the guards. What is the matter?"

"What's the matter? Are you kidding me?" Tails cried in disbelief. "We're at war with the Black Arms! They're going to literally eat every single one of us if we don't get a move on and get at the source of them! I need to see the Queen so that we can get the Griffin Knights airborne, I need Saito to come with me in the Tornado, I need to set up the perimeter defe-"

"Calm down, Miles. Everything is under control," he said, waving a hand. Outside, a massive explosion filled the air, bathing the city with a red light that was visible through the open doors of the hall. "This was expected. We have everything ready to go," he added, visibly shaken but attempting to remain calm.

Tails promptly gave him a middle finger and started toward the door. "If you're saying getting wiped out by thermobaric bombs and aliens was in the plans, then fuck this!" he called over his shoulder. "Come on Lèo, we need to find Saito."

* * *

 

King Joseph cackled with delight as the ball of red flame slowly dissipated in the heavy rain, revealing the massive circle of flattened buildings below. "My, these new toys are fun," he exclaimed, looking down at the pink-haired girl that sat tied to his throne. "To think that you held such power! No wonder those idiots in Albion had such a hard time assaulting Tristain. I think I'm finally starting to feel happy again!"

"You sick, twisted man," Louise spat, giving the blue-haired king an electric stare. "You're killing thousand of innocent people and you call this fun? No wonder Tabitha wants you dead."

"Well, I'm sure she'll at least appreciate the swift death that will befall her from one of these, after nearly ending up like her mother," he replied, placing a heavy hand on Louise's head. "I'm more interested to see if your little pet boy decides to drop in for a visit. I've heard he's quite strong, so I'm sure it will be fun for you to see him be beaten into a pulp."

Louise's eyes went wide. "No… shit, he's walking into a trap!" she thought. "Please dear god, no!"

From a side door to the left of his throne, Sheffield entered the room and promptly bowed before Joseph. "The second gargoyle is on its way out with another stone. Only a few more and the entire city will be flattened and yours for the taking."

Joseph nodded. "And your allies? I heard they started to… snack on one of our soldiers. Repulsive behavior, if you ask me. Are they at least effective?"

"Yes, my lord. They have already suppressed the entire city's populace, ready to be flattened by the Fire Stones. Only the cathedral offers any resistance, but their armaments are too strong and the defenders fall like wheat to a scythe."

"Good," he replied. "Now, my beauty, sit back and watch the fireworks!"

* * *

 

Tails ran out into the rain and began scanning the defenders' lines for his blue-clad friend, finding no trace of the Japanese boy. "Fuck! Where are you, Saito?" He took up a position behind the knights holding the line with massive shields and began returning fire over their heads with his T-Buster. Volleys of lasers from the Black Arms that took cover in the broken storefronts punched through the shields like butter, spraying the knights behind them with molten metal. "Ring, get a protective layer over those shields! We can't let the line go down!"

"On it," he said. Within moments, his signature blue shield blinked into existence around the heavy shields the knights carried, reflecting the Black Arms' shots in every direction upon impact. "Hey, I sense Saito headed this way. He's outside the gate!"

Tails kicked in his rocket shoes to get above the mass of knights, looking down into the street from above. Right on cue, Saito came skidding around the street with Derf at the ready, hacking his way through any Black Arms that stood in his way. Tails swooped down over the massive fence and grabbed him by the arms, carrying him back to the interior of the garden walls.

"Tails, we gotta move!" he said, sheathing Derf. "Those bastards took Louise!"

"What?!" the fox replied, flabbergasted. "Who? Where is she?"

"Those bastards that broke into the cathedral earlier! It wasn't some cheap thing they stole, it's some artifact that steals people's magic. I thin-"

Another massive blast filled the air, creating a shockwave that swept over the city and leveled buildings only a few streets away. Tails nodded and grabbed Saito by the shoulder, hauling him over to where Lèontine and Tabitha stood. "Way ahead of you, Saito," he replied. "It's gotta be Joseph. He must have stolen Louise's magic to do those explosions. We need to get up there where those Black Arms drop pods are coming from. We save Louise, destroy the dropship and get out of there."

Saito gave him a thumbs-up. "So how do we do this?" he asked.

Tails looked over at Tabitha and Lèontine and pointed at the sky. "They're probably going to send some aerial units at us if they get the chance. Go find Sylphid and as many of the Griffin Knights as you can and tell them to get airborne, we'll need them on defense. As soon as the skies are clear, I want you two to join Saito and me," he said, looking over at Saito now, "…on their ship. We need to strike hard and fast, since they'll be loaded with more of those aliens. Not to scare you, but I'm sure they wouldn't mind feeding Louise to them if that asshat Joseph has her powers and doesn't need her anymore."

"Then let's get going!" Saito said. "Lead the way."

Tails took off along the stone pathway, sprinting for the courtyard where the Tornado was parked. As he burst out into the open, he could see Julio leaning against the metal leg of the aircraft, holding a small, cloth-wrapped package. "Julio! Great timing, you're coming with us!" he called as he ran up to the craft and began to scale the metal leg.

"Sorry, Miles. I have different orders," he said, nodding toward Saito as he approached the craft. "I'm just here to deliver this, and then I'm back on gate defense. Here you are, Saito." He handed the cloth-wrapped package to the boy, who immediately unwrapped it. "I was told you would be able to figure out how it worked."

Saito hefted the handgun in the air and caught it, pausing to practice taking a sight picture before stuffing it in his pocket. "Thanks, Julio. I'm sure I'll need it," he said. He quickly scaled the leg of the craft and jumped into the copilot's seat behind Tails, who was already seated and booting up the craft.

Tails quickly undid his cloak while the canopy clicked shut, followed by slapping the thruster lever forward to boot up the turbines. "Actually, one sec," he thought, pulling back the power to the lowest setting and popping the canopy again. He hopped down from the craft and opened the access port to the Chaos Emeralds, withdrawing the teal Emerald. He locked the access port shut and flew up to the pilot's seat with his tails, taking a seat and latching the canopy shut for a final time.

"Ready when you are," Saito called. Tails nodded, set the Emerald in his lap and gunned the throttle, not bothering to put on his headset as the seatbelts launched forward and locked tight over his body. The craft rose into the air and began to gain speed as the turbines slowly rotated back to horizontal, propelling the Tornado forward. "Hold onto your breakfast!" Tails yelled over the turbines as he activated the afterburner, plastering the two to their seats from the acceleration. He yanked the stick hard, pulling the craft into a quick turn toward the northwest as it gained altitude. "They're probably northwest of us if they used the storms as cloud cover," he thought.

Without warning, Light Shot lasers zipped past the craft as a horde of flying creatures dropped out of the clouds, complete with Black Arms on their backs. "Just like old times, eh?" Tails thought to himself. He opened up with the Tornado's frontal lasers, strafing several of the dragon-like creatures with lethal pulses while pulling a hard right turn. He blazed past the remaining birds and charged into the clouds, flicking a few switches to turn on the X Tornado's aerial radar. A single sweep of the radar revealed a cluster of large objects not five hundred meters from them, motionless in the air. "Time to drop in!" he yelled, his voice obscured by the howl of the massive turbines behind him.

The Tornado streaked toward the cluster on the radar screen, but Tails paid no attention to the gauges. He dipped the craft below the thick clouds, revealing three wooden airships in a delta formation behind a single Black Arms gunship that lead the charge. Tails let loose several bursts of laser fire at the dark gunship, but the yellow pulses harmlessly bounced off without so much as a scratch. "Alright, we'll deal with them later, then. Louise first," he thought. "Ring, where is she at?"

"Middle ship. You ready, bro?" Ring replied in his mind.

"Any day of the week. Let's go!" Tails pulled the stick back and killed the throttle, flicking a switch to drop flaps and engage the air brakes as the craft began a loop. When the craft reached the apex of its loop, he grabbed the Emerald from his lap and hit a few switches to pop the canopy, manually release the seatbelts and engage autopilot. He could feel himself slip out of his seat as gravity took effect, falling clear out of the Tornado and rapidly picking up speed as the wooden airship rushed closer and closer.

"Tails, what the fuck!" he could hear Saito yell, his voice barely audible over the rushing wind. The fox spread his limbs wide to slow his descent, coming alongside Saito and locking arms. As the wooden deck of the airship rushed closer and closer, he put his tails into a rapid spin and engaged his rocket shoes to come to a smooth landing. As soon as he let go of Saito, gargoyles began to flood the deck from the lower holds.

"So glad you could join us!" a voice called over the rain. Beyond the gargoyles, Tails could see a familiar purple-clad lady make her way to the front of the group. "Although I'm sure you know me by now, my name is Sheffield. Now that we have the formalities out of the way, my master, King Joseph, is watching. Let's make this a show, shall we?" She drew a long, slender saber that she began to flourish as her pet gargoyles brandished their clubs with a cacophony of howls.

Tails looked over at Saito with a grin, but the gesture fell flat as Saito rolled his eyes and drew his handgun, firing once. The round ripped through the air and implanted itself in Sheffield's leg, dropping her to her knees in pain. "What the hell, man?" the fox said. "She wanted to give the big man a show, right?"

"And we're giving him a documentary on how I kicked his obnoxious servant's ass. Get in there and keep him busy before he levels the entire cathedral!" Saito yelled, taking aim on the nearest gargoyle. Tails nodded and took a running start before leaping into the air, using his tails to sail clear over the horde of monsters below him. He landed on the upper level of the deck and yanked open the side door to the control room, drawing Ring in his right hand. On the back wall, he could see a blue-haired man in plush robes seated on an ornate chair, with Louise tied to the front leg by a sturdy rope.

"Ah, and so we begin!" the man said, pointing at the fox with a sharp-looking short sword that glinted in the dull light. "You aren't the one I wanted to fight, but I suppose you'll be a good warm-up for the true duel."

"Buddy," Tails said with a smirk, "I'm certain this fight is going to be as real as it gets."

King Joseph frowned. "Good. Then I won't need to hold back then, will I?"

* * *

 

Saito pulled the trigger again and again as the gargoyles tried to close the gap, but more beasts popped up from the stairwells to take their fallen brethren's place. "They just don't end, do they?" he thought.

Finally, the slide of the handgun locked back, indicating he was out of rounds. He tossed the handgun aside and drew Derflinger, meeting another gargoyle head-on as he slammed the blade into its neck, cutting clean through with a single swipe. As the monsters slowly pressed in, Saito found himself backpedaling to buy him time between slashes. "Shit! All I need to do is get to that damn lady, and it'll all be over," he thought.

Derflinger's blade was on a collision course with another gargoyle's head when, without warning, the creature's head snapped back out of the path of the blade. The creature fell flat on its back, dead before it reached the ground from the massive icicle that was lodged in its skull. Saito looked behind him to see a griffin and a dragon hovering in front of the airship, claws at the ready. Tabitha leaped down from Sylphid's back to the deck as the two creatures turned to engage the flying Black Arms mounts that had followed them.

"Hey, good to have you, Tabitha!" Saito yelled over the rain, swatting aside another approaching gargoyle. "Tails is inside, but we need to deal with these guys first."

Tabitha nodded, her ferocious glare scanning the crowd of targets. She held out her staff and began chanting, a cloud of growing icicles forming over her head…

* * *

 

With a sudden snap of his fingers, the blue-clad man disappeared without a trace, leaving only his voice echoing through the room. "Try hitting what isn't there, my furry yellow friend! Unfortunately, these powers make things a little too easy for me; simply, you're too slow."

Tails let out a laugh. "That's Sonic's line, you fat bastard! Get a load of this!" he said, raising the Chaos Emerald overhead. "Chaos Control!"

Time slowed to a near standstill. Outside, the raindrops crawled by the glass windows of the control panel like crystalline slugs. King Joseph once again became visible, running in wide circles around Tails along the edge of the control room. "You know you can stop running around like a moron, right?" the fox said, giving the king a bored stare and a yawn. "I was hoping you would catch on with the whole "Chaos Control!" battlecry, but I guess you're dumber than I thought."

King Joseph was taken aback, stumbling to a halt. "What?! How is this possible? Surely I've only just begun? It can't wear off now!"

"Simple," Tails said, walking over to the man with his scimitar outstretched. "I pieced it together after seeing Louise do her thing in the fight with Albion, as well as what my friend Lèontine was able to tell me. Void magic isn't magic at all; it's just Chaos powers. Void Mages are humans capable of not only feeling and using Chaos, but act like an internal battery fueled off of their emotions, much like my friend Shadow. A lot of Mobians such as myself can tap into these powers under the right conditions, just like you can."

King Joseph used his saber to bat aside Ring, forcing Tails to take a step back. "No matter. A duel shall suffice as warm-up, I suppose," he said. "Well then? En gardè."

The king made a quick lunge at Tails, but the fox blocked and parried with a quick swing of his own. Joseph dodged and took a step back, but re-engaged with another quick thrust before Tails could capitalize on his mistake. The two traded blows left and right as a motionless Louise looked on, an expression of horror frozen on her face…

* * *

 

Saito took a deep breath as he withdrew his blade from the last monster, scanning the deck for Sheffield. "Crap, she's gotten away in the fight," he thought, looking at the stairwell to the lower decks. "Not our first priority. Louise first."

He caught Tabitha's attention with a wave as he jogged up the stairs to the upper deck, where the door to the control room stood wide open. As soon as his eyes met Louise's face, he began to run to her side.

"No!" she yelled, stopping him in his tracks. "They're fighting! Stay back or they'll kill you!"

Saito looked around the empty room, utterly confused. "There's no one here, Louise! We need to get out of…" he began to say, but was cut short as a hot spark passed in front of his face. Around the room, phantom images of Tails and a blue-clad man flickered in and out of existence, along with occasional sparks and collisions. "What the…"

* * *

 

King Joseph and Tails were panting heavily between sword strokes, the sound of metal on metal ringing in their ears. "Give in, fox-boy!" Joseph stated, pausing to collect himself. "You can only defend your friends for so long. All it takes is one stab!"

"Or," Tails said, "You could do us all a favor, die in a pit for what you've done to Tabitha and everyone else, and leave us be!" He approached for another round of swings and clashes, narrowly avoiding Joseph's blade with each lunge.

Finally, Joseph's defenses slipped. The blue-haired man lunged for a stab aimed at Tails' lower-right chest while his scimitar was already in position, allowing him to hold it still. Tails lunged to the left, dodging the blade while having it pass directly through the Power Ring lodged in the tip of Ring's blade. Tails twisted the scimitar and pulled hard, ripping the saber from Joseph's grasp. With a loud crash, the saber flew through the air and smashed through a window, the glass shattering in slow motion as the blade passed clean through, carving an outline of the blade like a cartoon.

Tails used his tails to launch himself off of the floor, charging straight at the stunned king. With a quick leap, he slammed both feet into the man's chest, sending him sprawling against the wall with a shattering crash of splintering wood. A quick flash from the Chaos Emerald and time returned to normal, the sound of rain roaring in Tails' ears.

"Tails?!" Saito cried, running over to his side. "What was that? You were there… and then not there, over and over. You okay?"

"Yeah, I'm fine," he panted, looking around the room. "Tabitha, come here."

Tabitha walked over to Tails' side, her eyes never leaving Joseph's drooping head. Tails stepped over the man and raised Ring's blade tip to his throat. "It's all your decision now. I'll… do it for you, but not without your order," Tails said, looking her in the eye. "Whatever you decide, I'll respect it. We'll respect it." She stood still for several minutes, her eyes never leaving his hanging head. After a moment, she placed her hand over his and pushed the blade down, shaking her head. "Shattered ribs, punctured lungs. He'll die," she mumbled.

Tails nodded and sheathed Ring, noting the man's ragged breathing. "That's fine with me. Sorry to take the choice from you. Let's get out of here. Ring, call Lèontine and Sylphid and tell them to get up here." He turned to the door and began to walk, but a loud clattering noise behind him caught his attention. A door in the back corner of the control room burst open, revealing Sheffield limping up the stairs with something clutched in her fist. She threw herself at Joseph's side and began to weep uncontrollably, running her other hand over his shoulder repeatedly. "You bastards… you stupid bastards… You're all fucked!" she wailed, opening her clenched fist to reveal a small red orb no larger than a small apple. "I'll take you down with us if it's the last thing I do, you shits! And you!" she yelled, pointing at Tabitha. "I hope you burn in hell. Your mother's below decks, and she'll be just as dead as you!"

Tails looked over at Tabitha and grabbed her hand, dragging her with him as he reached for the others. "Grab ahold of me!" he yelled, raising the Chaos Emerald overhead. "Chaos Co-"

* * *

 

Two brief flashes of light filled the air, causing both Halkegenian soldiers and Black Arms to look to the skies. In the distance, the airships instantly were blown to millions of fragments as the combined force of the remaining Fire Stones released, creating a shockwave that blew a massive hole in the clouds. Even the Black Arms gunship, as shielded as it was, was thrown to the ground by the massive explosion. The guards seized the moment of confusion to push out of the gates, rushing the remaining Black Arms with swords and pikes outstretched. Within minutes, the last of the aliens were skewered and dead, leaving the soldiers to return to the cathedral grounds and tend to their own. Queen Henrietta stood in the doorway of the main hall, scanning the groups of knights for any sign of Louise or her group. "Where are they…" she asked herself, her heart growing heavy…


	93. Season 4 Chapter 10

**FOUR DAYS LATER…**

Tails adjusted the jacket on his fitted tuxedo, specially made for him in the past few days for the upcoming ceremony. "I wish they didn't make me wear this thing," he thought to himself, tugging at his collar and bow tie to try to get some breathing room. "They just don't understand how hot you get when you have fur and clothing at the same time."

With a quick flick of his tails to ensure the custom pants fit, he stepped in front of the mirror and took a good look at himself. "Not bad, I suppose," he thought, twisting to get a look at his sides. "Two days to make all of this? I could have a machine do this in a few hours, tops. They even had a nice pattern from the Academy’s underground storeroom to work from…"

"Looking smooth, bud!" Ring said in his mind. "I bet the ladies will be all OVER you tonight, so you better watch yourself!" he added with a laugh.

"Shut up, Ring. I'm surprised Lèontine or Tabitha even wanted to come at all. Lèo's still hurt and Tabitha hasn't spoken a word in the past three days since we've gotten back to Tristain. She's hardly eaten, either."

"Yeah, but you're here to cheer her up, right? There isn't anyone alive who wouldn't crack a smile, seeing you waddle out there in a… what do you call that thing again?"

"It's called a tuxedo. It's supposedly fancy wear from Earth, where Saito's from. Honestly, I'd rather be out there looking for more Black Arms. Where there's a full gunship, there's bound to be more and I need to get to the bottom of it before they get to the bottom of us by the mouthful."

The door to Tails' room opened, revealing Lèontine in her human form, wearing what appeared to be a slender green prom dress that showed off her flattering figure. A large section of cloth bandage was visible where it wrapped around her left shoulder, white as snow.

"Oh, hey Lèo," he said, walking over to her. "Feeling better? I know you weren't able to eat much at lunch a few hours ago."

"Well, the shoulder still hurts from the burns, but they gave me some painkillers and a healing potion after taking out the stone and wood shards, so it should be gone in a day or two. They're pretty much just waiting for you and Guiche. Care to walk with me?"

"Well, if it's between me or Guiche being last, I'd pick Guiche," he joked. "Yeah, I'm ready."

Tails stepped out into the hall with Lèontine and followed the steady stream of knights and nobles as they filtered their way through the halls to the main room of the castle. After several minutes of painfully slow walking, they finally arrived in a large banquet hall on the ground floor of the castle, where a large crowd of partygoers waited for the ceremony to begin. As the last of the nobles filtered into the hall, Queen Henrietta took the stage behind the musicians at the front of the room, where her throne sat on an elevated platform for her to overwatch the dance. A quick tap on a wineglass with a fork and the entire room snapped to attention, all eyes expectantly focused on her.

"Ladies and gentlemen, we all know why we are here," she began, looking around the room. "We are here to celebrate. While yes, we are here to mourn those who have died in the attacks on Romalia and the destruction that ensued, we are also here to celebrate and give thanks to those who gave their lives to defend the Pope and his people, as well as myself. There are a select few in particular that I would like to thank, those who, in the face of fear and death, took the fight back to the enemy and won!"

At this, a roar of applause took the crowd by storm, filling the hall with raucous noise. Henrietta waited for the crowd's silence before calling names. "I'd like to bring Saito Hiraga de Ornielles of Tristain, Miles Prower de Ornielles of Tristain, and Lèontine of Gallia to the stage. Could you please step forward?"

Tails felt Lèontine pull him forward, gently working her way through the crowd to the front of the room. He took his place with her on his right and Saito on his left. When the four were situated in the front of the room, Henrietta made her way around in front of them and began. "While there are more who rightfully deserve honoring like these three, they have requested to remain unnamed, and we will respect that. Now, on with the awards. Saito, Miles, you may have noticed something when I called you to the stage," she declared, turning to the two boys. "Namely, your new titles. I am honored to present both of you with your own domain. In addition, you have both received a large monetary sum from the kingdom of Gallia as a token of apology."

Henrietta now walked over to to Lèontine and stood by her side, taking her hand. "Ladies and gentlemen, this is Lèontine of Gallia for those of you who have not heard of her. As I understand it, she is the familiar of Miles Prower, and was crucial in the assault on the enemy airships. For that, we have awarded her full citizenship in Tristain, as well as another sum of money for personal use. Thank you for your service to our nation, all of you!"

Another round of applause filled the hall as Henrietta shepherded the three off the stage and down to the dance floor. With a prompt count-in from the lead violinist, the small ensemble at the base of the Queen's podium jumped into life with a lively ballroom piece, spurring many guests to take to the dance floor. Tails could feel Lèontine drag him out into the crowd, but he resisted.

"Aren't you going to dance with me?" she asked, giving him a stern face. "You know it's rude to hold a girl up, right?"

Tails shook his head. "I need to find Tabitha first. I just want to make sure she's okay, since she didn't get called up to the stage."

Lèontine continued to tug on his arm. "I'm sure she's fine! I saw her before the party. She's just being her old self again. Just one dance, and then you can go find her, alright?"

After a moment of weighing the consequences, Tails nodded and gave in, following her to an empty spot on the dance floor. "You know how to dance, right?" she asked.

"I've learned a little bit while I've been here. I've danced a grand total of… once? I didn't dance at all at the Slepnir Ball, so yeah. Once."

"Well, I can always show you if you miss something. Want me to start?"

"Be my guest."

Tails gingerly took her right hand in his left and placed his right hand on Lèontine's side, making sure not to cause her any pain from her injuries. Once settled, the two took off in a basic circular dance, following the pattern and sway of the couples around them and occasionally improvising fancier dance moves as needed.

Lèontine noticed Tails was looking around the room more often than looking at her, prompting her to try to get him talking. "See? It can still be fun if it isn't Tabitha," she said with a smile.

"Yeah!" he replied, snapping back to the task at hand. "Sorry, I'm just distracted. She's worrying me, that's all."

"I'm telling you, I'm sure she's fine. You can go find her after this dance and she and I can switch off dances with you. I know it's probably a pain to deal with both of us and all…"

"No, not at all! The real pains are my friends back home, always messing up my stuff. You two are, you know, fun to be around. Shared interests and stuff. I'm pretty sure none of my friends at home have even picked up a book in the past year."

At this, Lèontine blushed a little bit. "Yeah, I suppose so… Hey, as soon as my wings are better, we should go out for more flights sometime," she offered.

Tails nodded. "Yeah, I'd be okay with that. I usually get too caught up in my own projects now that Saito's Zero is back and needs repair, but it'd be nice to get away for a while."

As the music winded down, Tails let go of Lèontine and stepped back. "Thanks for the dance!" she said, giving him another one of her endless smiles. "It was nice."

Tails nodded and ducked into the crowd, scanning for any sign of Tabitha. After several minutes searching the dance floor and asking around, he finally got a lead from one of the staff to check the upper balconies a few floors up. He took off for the stairs and flew up the staircase, slowing to a walk to catch his breath before stepping through the door to the balconies. Outside, Tabitha stood in her signature blue ball dress, her staff in hand as she looked down over the moonlit gardens.

"Hey, Tabitha!" he said, walking up behind her. "You look great! Is that the dress you wore when we first danced?"

Tabitha turned around and locked eyes with him. It took a moment for Tails to realize that what he thought was light reflected off of her glasses were actually a tears in her eyes. "Hey, Tabitha, you okay?" he asked, slowly approaching her. Without warning, she pushed him back with her staff, shaking her head. "Tabitha, talk to me! We can figure something out if you would just talk!" he exclaimed.

"Partner! Look up!" Ring said in Tails' mind. A quick glance up revealed a massive icicle hanging over Tabitha's head.

"Goodbye," she mumbled, pressing herself against the stone balcony. She dropped her staff, ending the levitation spell and allowing the icicle to plummet down toward her head. Tails darted forward and tackled her over the balcony, narrowly dodging the icicle as it crashed to the stone floor. A quick burst of his tails slowed their descent to the ground, bringing the two to a soft landing in the grass below behind one of the garden's many hedge rows.

"What the hell, Tabitha?!" Tails exclaimed, keeping his voice low to avoid attention. "You really thought killing yourself would be the answer to this? To all your problems? If you were only living to get your mother back, or get revenge on Joseph, then what would you do when you were done? Or if you failed?"

Tabitha simply stared at the ground, her shoulders hunched as if she were still bracing for a blow. To her surprise, Tails simply hugged her, cradling her head over his shoulder. "Hey, it's okay. You've got your friends, and me," he said. "Remember what I told the Queen back at Lagdorian Lake, with the fake Wales? I don't want to see any more of my friends get hurt. I've already lost Cosmo, and I'm not losing you too. So if you aren't going to live for yourself, then live for me. Alright? Promise me that?"

Finished with his speech, he guided Tabitha over to the stone wall of the castle and took a seat, having her sit down next to him. "You know, you don't have to be so silent. I remember hearing from the butler at your place way back when that you used to be… cheery, or at least more talkative. Why aren't you like that anymore?"

Tabitha slowly got control of herself, lifting her glasses to wipe her eyes. "How do you deal with death?" she asked, her quavering voice as soft as ever.

"Well, most of the time, I don't," he replied quietly, looking around to avoid her gaze. "Heck, you saw me when you saved me from that elf kid in the woods. I was totally shaken up because I had some delusion that we could have gone about it some non-violent way." He took a moment to collect himself by watching the moons, admiring their light. "Sometimes I still have nightmares about Cosmo. Whenever I kill, I… I try to reason my way out of it. I ask, "Who am I saving?", and if my friends are on that list, or if it's big enough, I do it. I kill. You do it by bottling up your emotions, keeping everything inside. But that's just as bad. You think you can keep stuffing more crap in the bottle, but eventually you just reach a limit and break, just like I hit walls in the logical approach. Cosmo was the biggest wall I've ever faced, and I still look back and look to see how I could have done it differently. Should I have tried to remove the microchip in her brain? I just don't know, and when I don't know, I break."

The two sat in silence as they absorbed the evening, thinking their own thoughts in private. Just beyond the hedge they sat behind, a door to the party hall opened up to let some fresh air in, filling the night sky with the sound of music and muffled conversations. "Hey, you wanna go back to the party and have a dance?" he asked. "If you'd rather sit, I can do that too."

After a moment of silence, Tabitha nodded. Tails stood up and helped Tabitha to her feet, dusting off the seat of his pants. "One sec, I'll go grab your staff," he said, taking to the air with his tails. He flew up to the balcony above them and picked up the fallen staff, shaking off the loose water from the melting ice that had begun to pool around it. He slowly drifted to the ground where Tabitha waited patiently and silently landed in the grass next to her. The two walked toward toward the open door and stepped into the party, heading straight to the dance floor. Tails spotted Saito standing by the snack bar and decided to stop by, taking Tabitha's staff back and handing him. "Hold it for a sec, would ya?" he said with a grin.

Saito gave him a brief thumbs-up. "Have fun!" he said with a grin.

Tails led Tabitha out to the dance floor and took position, resting his right hand on Tabitha's side and taking her right hand in his left. "Just like last time, right?" he said. As soon as a downbeat came around, the two launched into it, following the patterns and dancing the night away.


	94. Season 4 Chapter 11

Tails woke up to a splitting headache, not daring to open his eyes until he could massage some of the pain away by rubbing his forehead. "Ugh, I feel awful," he thought. "What happened?"

"Morning, Tails," Lèontine's voice rang in his head, painfully loud in contrast with the silence of whatever room he was in. "Thanks for the dances last night, they were fun."

After a moment, Tails cracked his eyes open and looked around the room, taking a mental check of his body. He was laying in bed somewhere, with his shoes taken off and his tails spread out over the bed. He thought one was clamped beneath his leg, but he lifted his feet up slightly and tried moving it, finding it still pinned tight. "Hey now, don't go moving that," Lèontine said with a giggle.

"Lèo, please tell me that's not your legs my tail is stuck between," he said.

"Alright, if that's what you want to hear, then it's not."

"You know, if you need me to build you a bed, I would. Not that I don't like you, but it'd be nice to not have you appear in my bed ever day. It's sorta creepy."

Lèontine let out a sigh. "Alright. So, what's on for today?"

"Well, step one, where are we? I don't remember anything after a bunch of dances with the two of you. Oh, and someone dumping a bowl of punch on Guiche," Tails added with a laugh.

"We're back at the Academy, in Tabitha's room. A waiter offered you a chocolate liquor for the ride home, and you were out cold for the entire ride. Tabitha used her magic to carry you up here. Your clothes are on a chair over there. You still didn't answer my question, though."

"Chocolate AND alcohol. That explains it," Tails mumbled to himself, rubbing his face again. "I feel like death…"

"We can fix that," she replied, starting to work her arms around him. Tails bolted out of bed, instantly regretting his decision as he nearly keeled over with nausea. "I'm… gonna go get some water," he groaned, working his way over to the door. He stepped outside and shut the door before Lèontine could protest, letting out a sigh of relief. "She's crazy," he thought as he crept slowly down the stairs, trying to avoid jostling his aching brain.

"She's got the love bug, bud," Ring's voice rang out in Tails' mind. "By the way, you'll have to go back there at some point. She left me wrapped up in your suit in here."

"Just let me know when she leaves and I'll swing by. I'm gonna try to get some work done on the Zero. Where's Saito?"

"He left already. Gone to check out his new place that the Queen gave him. You should go, too.'

Tails dismissed the notion. "Nah, I don't have much reason to move when my workshop is here. Moving shop would be too hard, and then I'd never get to use it if I have to stay here at the Academy all the time. It's bad enough that I rarely get out to my place on Cocoa Island…"

"Still, you should take a break. You've been moving, working, or fighting non-stop since you've been here. I could count on my invisible fingers how many times you've actually taken a break to do something fun, I bet."

Tails reached the bottom of the dorm tower and stepped outside into the warm morning light. The sun was already halfway to its peak, telling him it was probably already past breakfast. "Well, I suppose I need to go find the rest of the Emeralds. I don't know if there are many more Black Arms around, but it'd definitely be bad if they found them. Maybe I'll swing by somewhere scenic and have a meal, now that I have some cash."

"There you go! Girls dig picnics. Maybe A-"

"Whoa whoa, hold up. Who said this would be like that? I'm only bringing them because I'm not gonna leave Tabitha alone like she is, and I don't think I could keep Lèo from coming if I tried. This isn't gonna be anything romantic."

Ring simply laughed. "Bud, love's in the air and you can only hold your breath for so long. Anything you do with them is romantic, like it or not."

"I know, I know," Tails thought, shaking his head. He walked around the central tower of the Academy to the kitchen, where Marteau and several of his staff were cleaning up from the day's meal. The large man instantly spotted him and walked over to give him a firm handshake. "Miles! It's great to see you. A noble now, huh? You've grown up so much! It's inspiring."

"Thanks, Marteau," Tails replied, holding a hand over his stomach. "Hey, I don't suppose there's anything left from breakfast that's not too heavy? My stomach's still messed up from the party last night."

Marteau let out a jolly chuckle. "A hangover, eh? Well, we can get that fixed up right away. Take a seat, take a seat!" he said, shepherding Tails over to the cutting table in the corner of the room. He turned back to his cooking staff and began belting out orders, sending the chefs scrambling across the kitchen. Satisfied with the orders, he took a seat across from the fox at the table. "So, how're the ladies doing? Still able to keep up with all three?"

"Well, it's more or less dwindled down to just two of the four," Tails replied, rubbing his face. "Louise is always busy with Saito when she's not being kidnapped or going to war, and Kirche's basically disappeared. I think she's hanging out with Colbert for the most part. I picked up another friend during my excursion to Gallia, who turned out to be a Rhyme Dragon that then became my familiar. She's a bit pushy at times, but she's nice. I'm just worried about Tabitha all the time."

Two of the chefs brought over a pair of mugs filled to the brim with black tea, followed by a plate of scrambled eggs, toast, and an apple. "I heard about what happened in Romalia. Is it true, that the little blue-haired girl really is the princess of Gallia?" Marteau asked, taking a sip of his tea.

Tails nodded. "Yeah. She's really in a bad way since the fight. Long story short, the king of Gallia was her uncle. He killed her dad to get the throne, and poisoned her mom with an insanity potion. During the fight, he brought Tabitha's mom with him on the ship and killed her when his familiar blew the whole thing up. She was so shaken up about it, I had to stop her from committing suicide last night."

At Tails' words, Marteau nearly spat out a mouthful of tea. He took off his chef's hat and ran his massive hand through his hair, trying to think of something to say. "That would have been horrible! Beyond you and her, if all of her family really is dead, then she's responsible to step up to the throne! If she died, Gallia would be without a ruler for quite some time."

"Yeah, well, she's in no condition to take the throne right now as it is," Tails said between bites of toast with egg piled on top. "I talked to her last night, but she's still messed up about it. Even during the dances, she was still really quiet and more or less just being with me because she had no choice. I'm not sure if she'll ever let it go at this point."

Marteau sipped his tea in silence, allowing Tails to finish his meal before starting another conversation. "Feeling better?" he asked.

"Absolutely," Tails said with a smile. "Funny what a single drink can do to me."

"A single drink!" Marteau said with a loud laugh, slapping the table. "A single drink! My boy, you've got a lot more to learn if you can't hold your weight with the bottle! Well, I'd best return to my duties. It was good talking to you." The white-clad chef donned his hat and stood from his chair, giving Tails a final handshake before returning to his post in the center of the kitchen. Tails took his plate and wiped it down with a rag over a large garbage can, setting it and his mug in a small bin filled with dirty dishes before stepping outside.

"Right, onto the Zero," he thought, refreshed and feeling good. "Best case scenario, I should be able to get the engine rebuild done by this afternoon and get it out for a test flight. Then I'll check in on Tabitha and professor Colbert and plan for the evening from there." He walked over to Colbert's workshop and dropped down into his own space, the Power Ring lights overhead still blazing brightly. Thinking of all the tools he would need, he grabbed the old green fabric grocery bag that he had left on his workbench from the Academy storeroom and began collecting tools around the room.

With the complete tool set re-assembled, he lugged the heavy green bag back up the ladder and out to the front gate of the Academy, where the Zero sat on it's belly next to the Tornado. Despite the relatively soft snow landing, the landing gear was still slightly damaged, along with extensive damage to the propeller and engine. Tails removed his HUD from the bag and gave the craft a thorough multi-step scan. The device displayed a composite schematic of the craft from previous scans, painting the engine and the propeller in bright red. Surprisingly, several small spots on the interior of the craft popped up in orange or yellow, indicating a potential threat to break.

"Some of the welds in the airframe must have been damaged during one of Saito's hard landings. Shouldn't be any problem to fix," he muttered to himself, using two fingers on the screen to zoom in on the critical points. "I may need professor Colbert to use magic to lift the craft to get to the underbelly, though."

"You could always have me use a shield to lift it," Ring said in Tails's mind.

"I could, but only jacking the plane up by small points with the shield could cause damage to the airframe, if I’m going to need holes in the shield to access the underside. Besides, there's plenty of engine work to be done in the meantime. First, I need to remove all of the ammunition so that I don't have any cook off while redoing the welds near the ammo stores in the wings later."

Tails walked over to the side of the engine cowling and opened the service hatch to give the radial engine a focused scan, grimacing at the damage that appeared on screen. When the propellers impacted the snow and ground to a halt, the sudden seizing of the engine caused several parts to warp from the stress. The schematic revealed damaged mounting screws, bent piston rods and several other damaged components in bright red.

"Fantastic," Tails muttered, setting aside the HUD. "This is borderline on requiring a complete engine rebuild. He's lucky it seized up in a way that we didn't lose any of the broken parts, or we might be in some deep shit. I might be able to re-temper the old parts back into shape, if I can get them out..." He drew his T-Buster and withdrew the Power Ring it contained, promptly activating it. With the additional strength of the Power Ring, he picked up his favorite pair of Robo-Grips and began cranking away on the damaged bolts holding the engine in place, humming a nameless tune as he went…

* * *

 

Two hours and several Power Rings later, the Zero's engine was laid bare upon a clean blanket, drained of oil and fully deconstructed for maintenance. Tails was working diligently over the bent piston rods, heating them up with several quick passes of his T-Buster's plasma cutter before hammering them back into shape on a temporary workbench, made by overturning Saito's bathtub pot. He quickly quenched the rod in a small bucket of water, cooling it back down to its gunmetal-grey coloration.

"Maybe I'll call it for a day, with the piston rods and engine block trimmed up and reshaped," he thought, wiping his head with the back of his grease-coated gloves. "I'll have some fresh bolts printed up and have the plane re-assembled later this evening for a test flight tomorrow. With all the weight I was able to cut out, the plane might have gained a few knots to its top speed."

"Looks like you're having fun," Tails heard Kirche call. He turned to see the girl strolling out to him, a small plate of food in hand. "Thought you could use a snack when I heard you were out here. Wow, what's all of that?"

"This," Tails said, gesturing to the deconstructed engine, "is the heart of the Zero that Saito's been flying. It uses gasoline, that foul-smelling liquid we had professor Colbert brew up. It got pretty badly busted up way back when we landed at Gotha, so it needed repair."

"Looks a bit like some of the sketches I saw in his study when he was building the Ostland," she said, handing the plate to the fox and bending over to get a good look. "That's a lot of detail for one little machine."

"Yep! Professor Colbert actually reverse-engineered the Zero for building the Ostland, but he used a steam engine instead of trying to replicate this." Tails took off his greasy glove to pick a small handful of cheese cubes off of the plate, tossing them into his mouth. "Thanks for the food, by the way!"

"No problem!" she said with a smile, turning to face Tails. "So, what are you up to nowadays? Other than this, of course. I figured you would be out checking out your new territory, being a noble now."

Tails shook his head. "Nah, managing land isn't my thing. My workshop is here, so I have no reason to move. Actually, now that I have some free time, I plan to stow this thing for some more work later," he said, again nodding toward the engine, "…and do a little travel. I need to find the rest of the Chaos Emeralds, especially if there are more Black Arms around. I might make it a bit of a vacation, while I'm at it."

An idea popped into Kirche's head. "Hey, I know! You should visit Germania with me! I could introduce you to my family, and maybe they could help you find some of those gems you're looking for. I was planning to visit with Jean… er, professor Colbert, but he's off on another research mission while I finished up a few classes we'd missed in all the action recently."

"Sure, why not?" Tails replied. "I'd planned to actually do a quick sweep of Albion, since I could probably cover it in an afternoon in the air. Actually, now that I think about it…" he added, running the numbers in his head in silence.

"What?" Kirche asked.

"I was thinking, it's still before lunch, so maybe I could just have this light snack for lunch and get up there this afternoon, sweep the entire place, and then have an early dinner and spend the night. I'll probably take Tabitha and find a nice dinner place, something to cheer her up. We can head out tomorrow morning to come pick you up, and hopefully be wherever in Germania for the rest of the day."

"Sounds like a good plan. I'm sure she'd love that!" Kirche agreed. "You know, she really likes you. I can tell whenever she's not absorbed in a book in class, she's thinking about you. She even drew a little sketch of you in a little journal she's been keeping lately. I didn't know she could draw, but she isn't half bad!"

Tails blushed, but it wasn't visible through his facial fur. "Well, at least it's good to know she's starting to cope with what happened in Romalia. I just don't want her doing anything drastic again. Hey Kirche, could you do me a favor and help me get some of this stuff back to my workshop?"

"Yeah," Kirche said, drawing her wand. "Just let me know what needs to move."

Tails walked over to the Zero and closed the engine access hatches. "Pretty much everything except the pot and the plane itself. Everything on the blanket and the blanket itself, that is."

With a quick swish of her wand, the entire mass of metal and cloth lifted into the air and began to float back toward the main gate as Kirche walked. Tails dumped the rest of the snacks into his mouth and jogged over to catch up, gesturing for her to wait at the workshop door. A single button press on his wristcomm and the Tornado's hangar elevator began to rise, lifting the square section of grass and dirt clear out of the ground.

"I don't think that's ever not going to be cool," she remarked, shaking her head with a grin. "So, where do I set this stuff?"

"Inside. We'll ride the lift back down and set it on the floor somewhere other than where I'm gonna park the Tornado." The two stepped onto the massive platform, with Kirche carefully levitating the mass of parts into the space without whacking either of them in the head. The lift began its slow descent underground, revealing the brightly-lit workshop. To Tails's surprise, Lèontine lay on the metal floor in her griffin form, her rumbling breath filling the otherwise silent room as the hangar lift came to a stop.

"So this is where you've been keeping her?" Kirche asked rhetorically in a soft whisper. "No wonder I haven't been seeing her around much."

"Eh, she's actually been sleeping with me more often that I'd like," he replied. "Not something I care for, but there's not much I can do if I'm asleep."

Kirche gently set lowered the engine block and parts to the ground. Despite being cushioned by the blanket, a few parts clattered to the ground, disturbing Lèontine from her sleep. Her golden eyes flicked open as she rose to her feet, giving her entire body a quick shake to stretch out. "Hey, Tails. I was just taking a short nap. Whatcha up to?" she boomed, her massive voice filling the space.

"This," he replied, gesturing to the new mess of parts on the floor. "I just got done with some of the repairs on the engine for Saito's plane, but I'm gonna take a break and take the Tornado out for a spin for the day. Kirche and I just got done discussing some travel plans. I'm assuming you're coming?"

"You bet!" she said, jumping into the air in excitement. "I'll just need to go grab some of Kirche's clothes that are still in Tabitha's room. Is she coming?"

"Of course. I figured we could stop somewhere nice for dinner in Albion after sweeping the country for Chaos Emeralds."

"Can Sylphid come?"

"If it's all good with Tabitha, I don't see why not? We'll probably have to switch her out with Kirche when we head to Germania tomorrow, though. Kirche, could you do me another huge favor and go grab those clothes for Lèo while I hunt down Tabitha? And grab my brown purse and Ring while you're there, they should be on the table in the corner of the room or something."

"Sure thing," Kirche said. Tails quickly climbed the ladder with Kirche right behind him, removing the trapdoor to climb up into the upper workshop. Stepping outside, Kirche split off to head to the blue-roofed dorm tower while he headed for the main tower. Navigating the hallways of the Academy, he finally reached the main lecture hall and opened the door slightly to peek inside. On the far end of the room, he could see Tabitha seated at a desk, writing something into a small book while Ilococoo, dressed in an odd blue dress with a white blouse and long black skirt, watched over her shoulder. The two totally ignoring the lecture that was being given by Mrs. Cheveruse, but she seemed to pay them no mind. He quickly ducked back out of the room and waited patiently for several minutes for the lecture to end and students to begin streaming out of the hall before creeping back in.

Ilococoo instantly noticed Tails, giving him a quick wave. "Hey, Tails!" she said. At the mention of his name, Tabitha promptly laid down her pencil and closed the book she was writing in, looking up at him with her usual bored face.

"Hey, you two," he said, walking over to their desk. "So, I wanted to let you know that I'm headed out to do a bit of traveling to look for some more Chaos Emeralds. I was gonna head out to Albion right now and spend the night there tonight, then come back here tomorrow morning and pick up Kirche and go spend some time in Germania with her family while I look around there. Do you two want to come?"

"Heck yeah!" Ilococoo said, giving a quick fist pump. Tabitha simply nodded and stood from her chair, collecting her belongings.

"Alright, well then I'll meet you guys down at the main gate by the Tornado when you're ready," Tails said, making his way to the door. "We'll be leaving whenever everyone gets there, so don't hold us up!"


	95. Season 4 Chapter 12

Tails stood patiently by the Tornado with Ring and his heavy purse strapped to his torso, waiting for the three to arrive. "I didn't think it'd take them this long to get ready," he said, looking up at the sun. "At this rate, we may not be able to cover the whole island AND have time for dinner before it gets really dark."

"Yeah, well, pick one or the other. Stupid rock versus dinner with a trio of beautiful ladies that throw themselves at your feet?" Ring replied out loud, popping out of his sheath to speak.

"Stupid rock that packs more punch than several of those red orbs Joseph was using, combined," Tails said. "It's not that I don't WANT to have dinner, it's just that we're on a time crunch."

"You clearly don't understand the concept of a holiday, dude. Go get yourself a dictionary."

"What am I gonna do with a dictionary? Use it to whack Black Arms soldiers over the head? I was taught from a dictionary back at Knothole. Heck, I used to read them for fun, so it's not like I need one now."

"Then go somewhere where you aren't being chased by murderous, human-eating freaks for once."

Tails laughed. "You think I haven't tried? Last time I tried taking a vacation, a mercenary army of half-robot duck Mobians showed up and tried burning the place to the ground. I wasted my entire vacation blasting my way through their battleship and haven't had free time since. And don't even remind me of my trips to Downunda. Now, do me a favor and bring the S.S. Sass back to port before I throw you overboard at thirty thousand feet."

"You know, you're a lot of bark and no bite for a fox. I don't even think foxes bark, do they? By the way, they're coming."

Tails could see the three girls walking toward him through the main gate. "Yeah, we bark, but we've got the bite to back it up. You're just more useful than annoying, surprisingly enough."

"Oh, good to know you think of me so highly."

Tails climbed up on top of the Tornado as the girls approached, helping them up to take their seat one by one. Once everyone was settled in, Tails took his seat in the pilot's chair and booted up the Tornado, closing the canopies. He plucked his headset from the left side of the cockpit and held it above his head for everyone to see, indicating for them to do the same. Once everyone had their headsets on, he booted up the turbines and brought the craft to a hover, some fifty feet over the Academy grounds. "Everyone ready?" he asked.

"Yep!" Lèontine replied. "I've told Sylphid about the seatbelts."

"Alright, then we're off!" Tails opened up slowly on the throttle, allowing the craft to accelerate at a reasonable pace before transforming into flight mode for standard travel. Once the craft was up to speed with a quick crack of the sonic boom created by the craft, he brought the Emerald radar online and began sweeping for any signatures.

"Now we just kick back and relax," he said, pointing the craft in the general direction of Albion and turning on autopilot, stretching out in his chair for the long ride ahead of him.

* * *

 

After several hours of idle chatter with Lèontine and Ilococoo while the Tornado cruised along at supersonic speeds, the floating island of Albion grew into view. Tails switched off autopilot and pulled back on the stick, bringing the nose of the craft up to clear the edge of the island. Below him, he could see rolling fields of grass dotted with stones and odd groves of trees whizzing by, tempting him to pull to a stop and take a nap in the sun. However, within moments a faint blip appeared on the Emerald radar, sounding in his headset with a soft digital tone.

"Looks like it's our lucky day!" he muttered to himself. He banked the Tornado into a gentle left turn to face the craft toward the signal, the faint noise in his ear gradually growing louder. When the tone suddenly shut off, Tails killed the throttle and began slowing the craft down, circling around a grassy field below.

"What are we doing here?" Ilococoo said over comms.

"There's an Emerald here somewhere," Tails replied. "It's probably underground, knowing my luck. Not unusual, I suppose, but not convenient. I don't exactly have any digging tools on hand unless I decide to carve up a rock into a shovel."

When the Tornado finally lost enough momentum, Tails leveled out the craft and brought it to a stationary hover in Walker mode, slowly lowering to the ground. The heavy craft impacted the dirt with a brief shudder, the sound of the turbines spooling down as Tails removed his headset. Popping the canopy, he took one last look at the Emerald radar while his seatbelt retracted, allowing him to hop out of the jet to the grass below.

"Well, at least it's somewhere nice," he thought, taking a moment to stretch. A soft breeze rustled the grass across the empty field, kicking up a sweet earthy scent as it went. Behind him, Tabitha hopped down from the craft with her small leather bag slung over her shoulder and staff in hand, her eyes scanning the landscape.

"How long will this take?" Lèontine asked, climbing down the leg of the craft. "If you need it, we could probably help."

"Well, first we need to find it," Tails said, bringing his wristcomm closer to his face to work the controls. Holding the watch parallel to the ground, a small green arrow appeared on the screen, acting like a compass. "Shouldn't be too far from here. I'll be right back."

The fox began jogging in the direction that the arrow pointed, watching the screen carefully for any minute changes in its direction. After nearly tripping on several rocks, he finally reached a point where the arrow spun wildly, reacting to a strong signal.

"Got it!" Tails called back to the girls, waving them over. "It's under this rock I'm standing on. We need to move it out of the way."

The three strolled over and took a good look at the rock, evaluating it. Tabitha gently waved her staff, causing the rock to shake. After several moments, the boulder shook itself free of the dirt and began to rise into the air, leaving behind a large crater as Tabitha tossed the rock away with another flick of her staff.

"Hey, I see something!" Lèontine announced, hopping down into the hole. Tossing away a couple of handfuls of dirt, she promptly held up a small wooden box, grey with age. "It might be someone's secret stash, but who cares?"

Tails took the box from her as she climbed out of the hole, examining the rusty, dirt-coated iron padlock that held the box shut. Seeing that there was no way the lock would be operable, he drew his T-Buster and cut the lock off with a quick swipe of its plasma-cutter blade. Inside, a cracked and hardened leather lining surrounded a small assembly of gemstones and jewelry, as well as a separate pouch of gold coins. Beneath all of this, a single piece of parchment lay folded, held shut with an ornate wax seal.

"Is that it?" Tails asked, shuffling around the contents of the box. "The Emerald isn't here. Maybe it's underneath this?" He gave his wristcomm another glance and was surprised to see the arrow pointing in a new direction. He looked over to see it pointing in the direction of the boulder that had been removed, now sitting patiently in the grass. "Oh. Well, I wasn't expecting that," he said with a laugh.

"What's so funny?" Ilococoo asked, peering over his shoulder at his watch.

Tails pointed at the boulder that had been displaced. "It's actually IN the stone. Not underneath it. Shouldn't be too hard to cut open. Here, hold this," he said, handing her the box. He trotted over to the stone and flicked open a small hatch next to the ring storage slot on his T-Buster, exposing a control panel. He adjusted a small slider that extended the length of the blade by a few feet, holding the beam next to the rock to ensure it was long enough. Several slashes of the plasma blade left the rock exposed, the purple Emerald glowing brightly from inside a small pocket in the rock. Tails plucked the gem and gave it a quick heft in the air, catching it and stowing his T-Buster.

"So, is that it?" Lèontine asked, eyeing the purple gem. "I thought there were supposed to be five of them…"

"I wish," he replied. "If all five were here right now, we'd be done. No, they've been scattered all over the country at best case scenario, all over the world in the worst case."

"So, back to the plane?"

"Yup. We can stay here for a little bit and take a break if you want, but I want to cover the entire island before dinner. Just don't hurt yourself if you decide to go flying."

Lèo gave him a dismissive wave. "Nah, I'm good. Just curious, that's all. Let's go!"

* * *

 

Several hours later, the radar sweep of the entire island country was completed. "Nothing else," Tails said with a sigh of exhaustion. "I was hoping for more, but one Emerald is better than none I suppose. Maybe we'll find more in Germania."

"So does that mean we're headed for dinner?" Ilococoo asked. "I'm starving!"

"Yeah yeah, we can go for dinner. Tabitha, know any good places around here? Otherwise I'm just gonna pull into the nearest town and get some directions. I don't intend to hold over in a little pub, if possible."

"Try the capitol, Londinium" she said, her faint voice amplified by the headset speaker in Tails' ear.

"Yeah, maybe we'll just head back to that big city we passed an hour ago and just find something ourselves," he replied. "Now, let's see… That was back behind us, more inland…" He gave the control rod a slow pull back, putting the Tornado into a half-loop to get it going the opposite direction. After righting the craft, he cycled through several switches to disable the Emerald radar and switch over to standard ground-sweep radar. "The buildings should come up as a pretty big ground target since they'll reflect waves well," he thought to himself.

Within minutes of flying, a massive blip appeared on the edge of the radar screen, glowing bright green on the dark background. "Alrighty, it's on the radar. Should be visible…" Tails muttered. In the distance, he could see a large castle reaching into the sky, much like the one in Tristain. "Well, that was easy. Now, somewhere to land… Eh, we can just walk into town in the Tornado if the streets aren't too busy."

As the Tornado approached the outskirts of town, Tails let off of the throttle and used flaps and air-brakes to bring the craft to a slow glide. He switched the Tornado over to Walker mode and gently lowered the craft down to the ground. Once the turbines spun down, Tails took the controls once more and took the Tornado stomping into town, the commotion bringing people to their doors and windows from the buildings on either side to watch with awe.

"You sure this is a good idea, Tails?" Lèontine asked, smiling and waving back to a couple of children that watched from the street as the Tornado thundered past. "It's sorta freaking everyone out, I think."

"It's fine. I'd rather keep the Tornado close when traveling abroad," he replied. "Aside from the fact that we're in ex-enemy territory with the weapon that beat them in the war, making it a great target for theft, I want to be able to get out of here fast if someone recognizes me and tries to attacks us."

"Fine. So where are we headed?"

Tails shrugged. "Not sure, really. One sec." Tails popped the front canopy, leaning over the edge to greet the people on the edge of the street. "Excuse me, but where could we find some of the nicer restaurants in town?"

A young man pointed down the street. "Head about ten blocks that way, then turn left and head up the hill a bit. There's a pretty nice place at the top of the hill, but I think it's for nobles only. You might find something around there, though."

"Thanks!" Tails said, withdrawing a single coin from his purse attached to Ring's sheath and tossing it to the boy. He closed the canopy again and took the controls, putting the Tornado into an easy march down the streets.

"You know, you shouldn't tip so much," Lèontine said over comms. "That gold coin alone was probably more than a season's salary for his entire family combined."

"Wait… so those books we lost in Romalia were about… jeez, books are expensive!"

"Well, yeah. It takes mages a lot of work to copy books page-by-page, so they charge a lot for it. Most people know how to read, but don't have many books. I had to steal most of mine from nobles, when I was a kid."

Tails reached the corner that the young man had pointed out, looking up the street to his left. At the end of the street, a large mansion-like building sat atop a small, oddly uniform-looking grass-coated hill, surrounded by a large decorative wrought-iron fence. Two guards stood at the gate, one holding a large pike and the other a bulky scroll. "Maybe it has a long waiting list…" he thought.

"Maybe, but maybe not. Go try anyway," Ring replied in his mind. "Worst case scenario, you go back to plan A and get something to take out to a picnic."

"Fair enough." Tails set the Tornado into motion down the street, slowly approaching the hilltop manor's gates. Watching the guards, he could see brief signs of fear as they quickly composed themselves for their new arrival. Tails brought the Tornado to a stop a few feet from the gate and popped the canopy to get out of the craft.

"Excuse me, sir, but this restaurant is for nobles only," the guard with the scroll said. "Are you perhaps collecting a reservation for a passenger of yours?"

"Oh, reservations… no, we don't have any. One of them is a noble, if you need them to do the paperwork," Tails replied, pointing back at the craft with his thumb.

"Well, I don't believe we have any free tables tonight," the scroll-bearing guard stated as he scanned the document briefly. "I'm afraid the earliest opening we have would be a week from now."

"Well, crud," the fox muttered, rubbing the back of his head. "I don't suppose there's some other way to get a seat?"

"Unfortunately, no. We can check to see if any reservations have been missed by the other gate, but I highly doubt it," the guard with the pike replied bluntly. "I imagine you are out of luck."

Tails shook his head and began heading back to the Tornado. "Don't bother, no need to waste your time. Is there someplace around here I could get a good meal?"

The guard with the pike pointed at a small pub on the left side of the street the Tornado had just come down. "Many of the restaurants are pretty good around here, but that one's a favorite of my friends at the palace. You could get something there for sure, if it's not too crowded."

Tails nodded and climbed up the leg of the Tornado to the cockpit, plopping down at the controls. "Thanks for the advice," he said with a wave before shutting the cockpit. He promptly turned the Tornado around and marched over to the pub where a single horse was tied up, complacently sipping water out of a trough. "Brave little pony," he thought. "Didn't even flinch at the sound of the Tornado."

"Here?" Tabitha asked, not bothering to use her headset. Tails shut the Tornado down and popped both canopies, standing back up. "Yeah, the other place was too full for us to get a seat. They said this place has pretty good food, though," he replied

Lèontine and Ilococoo promptly hopped out of their seats and dropped to the ground, happy to stand up after the day's long flights. "About time! We're starving!" Lèontine commented.

"Yeah, sorry about that. I'm sure you'll be able to find something you like, or at least something that will fill you up," Tails said as he helped Tabitha to the ground. "Let's go check it out."

Ilococoo held open the door for the other three as they stepped into the bustling pub. Across the dark, noisy room, Tails could hear the odd notes of a piano and shrill cries of some wind instrument. A waitress carrying a tray of drinks promptly approached the four where they stood by the door. "Seats for four?" she asked in a sing-song voice.

"Yeah, that'd be great," Tails replied. He followed the waitress as she began to make her way back into the depths of the seating area, guiding the four to a booth cushioned with course green-plaid fabric. "Any drinks for you?" the waitress asked as the girls took their seats.

"I'll just have water, thanks," Tails said, taking his seat next to Tabitha and picking up his menu. He silently looked over the assortment of options while the girls made their drink orders, sending the waiter off with her tray to serve other tables.

"So, whatcha looking at, Tails? See anything good?" Lèontine asked, looking over her own menu.

"I dunno… I may just go with something simple like shepherd's pie. I had a pretty light lunch, so something filling."

"Hmm… yeah, that doesn't sound half-bad," she replied, idly looking around the room until her eyes settled on a table across the room. "Oh, hey, someone's got some space at a poker table. Just order me one of those, I'm gonna go play a game. And, uh, can I borrow a few coins?"

Tails nodded and stuck a hand in his purse, picking out three gold coins and the few silver coins he had received as change for the books from Romalia. "Try not to lose it all in one game."

Lèontine looked offended as she stepped out of her seat. "Need me to beat you in blackjack again to remind you I'm better than that?" she remarked before walking over to the table where a fresh game of poker was being dealt. The waitress returned with the tray of drinks, setting them gently on the polished oak table to avoid spilling them. She promptly took the group's orders and disappeared back into the kitchen.

"So, how long until you make a decision?" Ilococoo asked, locking gazes with Tabitha. The two simply sat silently for a moment before she backed down again, silently mouthing an apology.

Tails gave Ilococoo a questioning look. "Is there something I'm missing here?" he asked.

"Nothing! It's just a question I had for Miss Tabitha, but she doesn't want to talk about i-"

"How long until I take the throne," Tabitha interjected, promptly silencing Ilococoo.

"Ah…" Tails replied. "We'll cross that bridge when we get to it."

Ilococoo shook her head. "That's the problem – we're already there!" she exclaimed a bit too loudly, getting odd looks from other tables that made her uncomfortable. "With the king dead, an heir to the throne has to be brought forth within a month, or the barons start fighting over it," she added in a softer tone.

"…Well, that's an issue," he replied, looking over at Tabitha. "So, if you don't step up in the next few weeks... a civil war starts?"

"Yes," she said, adjusting her glasses and taking a sip of her wine. Tails let out a sigh and opened his mouth to speak, but a sudden commotion in the room interrupted him. He noticed several occupants of the pub were looking back at the game tables, and turned his attention to the table where Lèontine was seated. She was now standing, holding the man that had been sitting next to her by the throat with her right arm in its griffin form, the sharp talons gleaming dully in the candlelight over the table.

Tails launched out of his seat and ran over to her. "Lèo, what the hell are you doing?!" he asked, watching wide-eyed as she slowly choked the man in her iron grip. "You're gonna kill him if you don't let go!"

"The little bitch deserves it," she growled, her fierce gaze not leaving the man's face. "First, I caught the fucker cheating for his first few turns, swapping cards. I left it because I knew I could beat him anyhow, even with his shithead friends looking away. Then he tried to touch me!"

At these accusations, several of the men on the opposite side of the table stood up. "Who're you calling shithead, ya little runt! Put him down or else!" one man yelled, a burly fellow with several small sacks of gold hanging from his belt – "the ringleader of the group, for sure," Tails thought.

Lèontine gave the men a brutal, icy stare. "You want to deal with him? Here." She let the man go and gave him a swift punch across the nose, sending him flying over the edge of the table into the arms of the man to the right of the ringleader.

"That's it!" the ringleader yelled, slamming his fists on the edge of the table. He quickly shifted his hands to grip the edge of the card table and lifted, violently flipping the table in Lèontine's direction. With blinding speed, she placed both of her hands on the center of the table and shoved with all of her might, sending the table flying back at her adversary. The table caught the man head-on, throwing him back against the wall as the table clattered to the floor on top of him, two of its legs shattered from the landing. The ringleader's two goons didn't waste a moment after seeing Lèontine's strength to bolt for the door, leaving their boss and their unconscious partner behind.

"Serves them right!" she huffed, crossing her feather-coated arms. Tails promptly dragged her back to the booth where Tabitha and Ilococoo were waiting, watching with varying degrees of interest.

"Lèo…" Tails began, pausing to rethink his choice of words. "I know you were angry, but you could've just killed both of those men. I'm not saying they shouldn't be punished, but that was excessive."

"And what exactly would you have done if you were in my situation?" she asked, taking a sip of her wine to try and calm down. Her wineglass appeared completely dwarfed by the razor-sharp talons that encompassed it. "Did you just expect me to sit down and take it?"

Tails shook his head. "To be honest, I probably would have tazed them with my T-Buster and let them sleep where they landed. Not break one's nose, throw him across the room and crush another guy with a table, but I know you didn't have much choice. Let's just drop it and forget that just happened, in hopes that we don't have to pay for damages. Speaking of money…" He looked over at the remains of the card table, but all of the money that had been thrown from the table had been instantly swept up by others. Lèontine nodded in agreement and got out of the booth. Tails watched as she walked over to where the ringleader lay unconscious, pinned underneath the table where it lay. With a quick swipe of her talon, she liberated the man of the several purses he wore, carrying them back to the table.

"Not what I was thinking, but I suppose he deserves it," Tails sighed. "Just set one of those aside for the pub owner to replace his table. Pay me back my part later and you can keep the rest."

Finally, the waitress that had served the group drinks finally returned, visibly nervous from the events that had just gone down. "Uh… thanks, I suppose. That man's been frequenting this bar too often, roughs up our guests and the like. My husband says meals and a room are on the house for your services."

Lèontine gave Tails a sly, pride-filled grin. "We'll be glad to take you up on that. Let's see, what to eat…"


	96. Season 4 Chapter 13

Tails woke with a yawn, rubbing his eyes and sitting up in bed. Thankfully, the pubkeeper's wife had enough spare rooms to give Tails a separate room from the girls, complete with a lockable door. "Thank god for that," he thought, doing a couple quick stretches in bed to fully wake up.

Right on cue, soft knocking resounded from the door. Tails slipped out of bed and noiselessly walked over, undoing the bolt and opening the door a bit. The three girls were waiting outside, freshened up and ready to go. "Morning, Miles!" Ilococoo said cheerfully.

"Morning," he replied, opening the door wide. "One sec, let me grab my stuff. You guys sleep well?"

"Somewhat," Lèontine added with a quick glance at Tabitha. "It took a while to get to bed, but the mumbling wasn't so bad once I was asleep."

"She snores," Tabitha added, not bothering to look back at Lèontine.

Tails stepped back into the room and fetched his shoes, gloves, and Ring in his sheath. "Well, today we get to hit Germania. Knowing Kirche, she'll probably want to show us around Germania some, which will take a couple days. Should give us some time to chill."

"But what about breakfast?" Ilococoo asked. "Food would be great right about now, if we have the time."

"Well, I was sorta hoping to hold out until we got back to the school to grab something, but if you're starving now we can grab something from downstairs I guess," Tails said as he slipped his feet into his shoes. He stepped out into the hall and followed the three downstairs, where Ilococoo promptly jumped to the front and lead the group to a table. The pub owner's wife, who had been cleaning the counters to set up shop for the day, promptly delivered some menus. "Pick whatever you like and I'll have it out as soon as the stove's heated up," she said. "Anything to drink in the meantime?"

"Mint tea, if you have it," Tails said, looking over the diminutive breakfast menu. "And I'll just have eggs and toast to eat."

"Sure! And you, m'dear?" she asked, nodding toward Tabitha.

"Same," she said, setting aside her menu.

"We'll have the same, with water to drink," Lèontine added, stacking her menu on top of Ilococoo's and handing it back to the lady. With the orders taken, she gathered the menus and wandered back across the silent restaurant to relay the orders to the chef.

"Heck, this is the first time I think I've ever had a restaurant to myself, excluding the occasional chilidog stand visit," Tails commented, looking around the restaurant. "It feels weird to see everything so… clean."

"That's castle life for you!" Ilococoo said, looking up from messing with her cufflinks on her outfit's sleeves. "Everything was always so clean, perfect, even painting-like at times. You could throw paint at a wall and a servant would have it cleaned to a polished shine within the hour! It was like dust didn't even exist within the Versaille's walls."

"Versaille… where have I heard that name before?" Tails thought aloud, snapping his fingers as he tried to jog his memory. "I think I remember seeing it in a textbook somewhere. Might have been in Chris' world."

"Versaille is where the Gallian throne is," Ilococoo answered.

"I thought that was Al Hambra?"

Tabitha shook her head, but Ilococoo continued. "No, that was just a vacation home, more or less."

"Gotcha," he replied with a nod. "Well, with luck we should be on our own vacation in Germania by this afternoon. I'll see if we can talk to Kirche's family first and save us from flying around the country again if we don't have to. If we do, you three can just stay with Kirche and I'll fly solo for a bit. After our visit there, we can drop by and see Saito for a bit, or maybe do a quick tour of Gallia."

"Sounds good. I've heard that the Germanians make great beer. Totally pumped for that!" Lèontine said with a grin. "Maybe we'll get to challenge them to a drinking match!"

Tails sighed and rolled his eyes. "Whatever works for you. Getting purposely wasted isn't my thing. I still remember when Sonic tried his first drink with Uncle Chuck, and it still scares me. He passed out cold for so long I thought he might have gotten into a coma from the concussion when he fell off his chair."

"Yeah, well you didn't seem to mind getting a little messed up taking that drink on the ride home from the dance," Lèontine remarked, still giving him a sly grin.

"Knock it off, Lèo. It was one drink, and I didn't realize it had cocoa in it."

After a few more minutes of idle chatter, the four received their food and promptly devoured it, paying their bill with the gold that Lèontine procured the night before. Tails stepped out into the bright morning light and took a deep breath, taking in the scent of the breeze that filled the city's streets. He could see several young boys were playing around on the X Tornado, left there by their parents so they could shop in peace.

"Hey, guys," Tails called out to the kids, waving to catch their attention. "I need you to get down from there! We need to leave, so I sorta need my jet back!"

Groaning in annoyance, the children clambered down from the jet and promptly dispersed into the streets as Tails began helping the three girls up to their seats. When everyone was situated, he plopped down into his seat and booted up the turbines, controlling the Tornado to take a few steps backward. He waited patiently for the street to clear of passerby before opening up on the throttle, sending the craft skyward. Once the Tornado was well above the city, he switched out of Walker mode and took to the skies, headed for Tristain.

* * *

 

After several hours of silky-smooth flight, the Tornado touched down in the inner walls of the Academy. Tails popped the canopy open and hopped down to the ground, jogging off in the direction of Kirche's dorm.

"She's in class right now, bro," Ring said in his mind. "Looks like they're getting close to wrapping up, from what I can see. Heheheh, this guy, man."

"What guy?" Tails thought back. "Let me guess, staring at Kirche?"

"No. Doodling in his notebook to look like he's busy. Making stupid jokes. The works. Just cracks me up, that's all. Their parents waste a ton of gold on this kid to come screw around in class."

Tails turned toward the central tower and began making his way toward the lecture hall. As he arrived at the door, students began streaming out with books in hand. Eventually, he could spot Kirche's bright-red hair through a group of students and gave her a short wave to catch her attention.

"Hey, Tails! Back so soon?" she asked. "I thought you'd do a little more sightseeing than that."

"Well, we did cover the entire island, so you could say we did a fair bit of sightseeing," he replied.

"Did you at least find what you needed?"

"Yep! Only one more, but better than none I suppose. We're ready to head out to Germania whenever you're ready."

Kirche nodded. "Alright, I'll go drop off my books and pack a few necessities. Where should I meet you?"

"We're parked right in front of the main gate. You'll be switching seats with Ilococoo. Don't pack too heavily, there isn't much space for it. Tabitha's staff barely fits as it is."

"Ok!" she replied. Tails watched as she disappeared into the crowd again, waiting for the stream of students to pass before making his way back out to the Tornado. Outside, Tabitha sat on the wing of the Tornado and watched Ilococoo and Lèontine played some game with their hands.

"Alright, Kirche should be here in a few minutes after she packs," Tails called as he ran over to the three girls. "Ilococoo, since there isn't space, would you mind staying behind this time?"

"Aww, do I have to?" she whined, looking to Tabitha for backup. "Can't someone just sit on someone else's lap?"

Tails shrugged. "I suppose it's possible, but it's gonna be uncomfortable and I'm not planning to stop and take breaks if we can avoid it. I'll let you guys organize who goes where."

"Yeah!" Ilococoo cried, quickly hugging Tails in her outburst. While she went back to her game with Lèontine, Tabitha hopped down from the wing of the Tornado and walked off toward her dorm. "Probably to use the bathroom or pack something extra," he thought as he watched her go. He took a seat on the grass against the Tornado's leg and closed his eyes, clearing his head for a moment.

Several minutes passed until Kirche and Tabitha returned. Tabitha gently tapped Tails' shoulder with her staff to wake him. "We're ready," she said.

Tails hopped to his feet and began helping the girls up, taking a small bag from Kirche's hands and tossing it in one of the chairs. He climbed up the craft's leg to get in, only to find Lèontine sitting in his seat.

"No, Lèo," he said, shaking his head and gesturing to one of the other seats. "Double up with someone else, please."

"No one else wanted to double up, so it's you and me," she said with a shrug. "I want it about as much as you do. Besides, you're the shortest of us all. If I sat with anyone else, I'd probably have my head against the glass the whole way."

"Yeah, right. Don't want it, my ass," he muttered. He made began to sit down, but Tabitha promptly stood up and began to get out of her seat. "I'll ride with Sylphid," she offered, stepping out of her seat to move back with Ilococoo.

Tails waved her to sit down. "Don't bother. It'll be fine," he said, but Tabitha took a seat with Ilococoo anyway. "Thanks, Tabitha. Lèo, would you mind?"

"Suit yourself," she said with a short sigh. She hopped out of the pilot's seat to take her seat, but not without giving Tabitha a brief stare. Tails took his seat and shut the canopies, booting up the engines and readjusting his headset. The craft slowly climbed into the air and began to accelerate forward, the Academy shrinking into the horizon behind them as they got up to speed.

"Kirche, you there?" Tails said into his headset, looking back over his shoulder. After a brief moment of soft static, he could hear a soft tone as her headset came online. "Sorry, Tabitha had to show me how to make it work. Need something?"

"Yeah, directions would be nice. We're currently headed south from the Academy, for reference."

"Head east-northeast. I'm not sure how far it is by flight, but by horse it takes a couple days. The Ostland didn't take more than an afternoon at cruising speed."

"Oh, we're gonna blow the Ostland out of the race, easy," Tails said with a laugh. "Watch!"

Tails pushed the throttle slider the last quarter of the way and opened up with the afterburner, grinning as the craft rocketed forward and glued him to his seat. Only after his moment of ecstasy did he notice an odd popping sound in his headset as Ilococoo took Tabitha's headset from her.

"Miles, stop! You're crushing me back here!" she yelled. "Let up!"

He flicked off the afterburner, killing the craft's wicked acceleration as it reached a level speed. "Sorry, just wanted to have a little fun," he apologized. "Kirche, keep me updated on where we need to be heading. Let me know if I need to drop low to let you get a better look at a town or landmark, but let's avoid stopping if we can."

"Sure," she replied, looking over the edge of the craft to the landscape below. "Yeah, this is crazy fast! We should be there in a few hours, at most. I'll let you know if I see anything."

The Tornado rocketed through the air, stopping at an altitude just below the clouds to keep visibility with the ground. Glad to be in the air again, Tails kicked back in his seat and flicked on autopilot, shutting his eyes to relax in the occasional sunlight.

* * *

 

Between on-and-off naps, Tails watched as the forest-dotted fields of central Tristain gave way to thick evergreen forests and rocky hills. "Not too much farther," Kirche said over comms as she watched the winding roads below. "That last town we passed was one of the last towns between the Academy and home, so it should be in view pretty soon… yep, there it is!"

Tails could see a large, grassy clearing backed up to a rocky outcropping that formed the backdrop of a large mansion as the Tornado whizzed by. He brought the craft around as it lost momentum, switching over to Walker mode to bring the Tornado to a hover over a large courtyard laid out in front of the sprawling manor. The machine touched down on the smooth tilework with a loud *cachunk*, signaling for him to kill the turbines. He could see a small army of butlers and guards approaching the Tornado from the mansion with swords drawn and muskets raised, giving him the notion that something was wrong. "Kirche, you sure this is the right place?" he said nervously, his left hand resting on the throttle and his right on the control stick, fingering the trigger in anticipation.

"It is. My dad gets really antsy about defense, and you sorta just jumped it all in one go. I'm surprised they aren't already firing. Just open this glass thing," she replied.

After a moment's consideration, he reluctantly popped the rear canopy open. Looking over his shoulder, he could see Kirche remove her headset and stand up out of the craft, waving to catch the approaching defenders' attention. As soon as the group caught sight of her, they lowered their weapons and rushed to the craft's side. Tails popped the front canopy and stood up to greet the men, only to raise his hands in surrender as they raised their weapons at him.

"Put those down, you idiots!" Kirche commanded, receiving confused looks from the defenders. "He's my familiar. I'm just showing him around."

"Kirche!" a voice boomed from the direction of the manor. From on top of the Tornado, Tails could see a massive man strolling down the pathway, his red and black robes flowing from his shoulders. The gold embroidery and strong figure of the man's body and movement struck Tails as rather odd, but interesting. "Definitely not someone I should piss off, I'd guess," he thought to himself.

"Hi, dad!" Kirche said, hopping down from the Tornado to greet the man. Tails helped Tabitha, Ilococoo and Lèontine down before hopping off to join the rest.

"Glad to have you home! What brings you this time around? Ahh… what a marvelous machine!" the man said in a thick accent, almost completely ignoring Kirche as he strolled around the X Tornado, to take in every angle. "Its stark lines, wonderful color… a fine advancement! Tell professor Colbert I send my regards. I'll be holding onto this latest device of his until he arrives again with the Ost-"

"DAD!" Kirche yelled, cutting him off. "That's not professor Colbert's work. That thing belongs to Tails here," she said, placing her arm around Tails' shoulder. "He's my familiar from another world I told you about. Remember?"

The man cleared his throat and collected himself, slightly embarrassed. "Terribly sorry, fox-boy! I had assumed it belonged to professor Colbert. He's been working with us as of late and said he'd be sending something our way soon."

"No problem at all, sir!" Tails replied, grinning. "Can't be mad with someone who appreciates good mechanical work."

"Aaaanyways," Kirche butted in again, gesturing to the other three girls. "This is Tabitha, my best friend from the Academy, and is also one of Tails' masters. He has three, technically. The blue-haired girl over there is Ilococoo, a Rhyme dragon and Tabitha's other familiar. The brown-haired one is… I'm sorry, what's your name again?"

"My name's Lèontine," she said, bowing toward Kirche's father. "I'm also a Rhyme dragon, and Tails' familiar."

Kirche's father let out a loud chuckle. "My, what a mess of ties! I'll be hard-pressed to keep that straight. I'm Wilhelm Friedrich Augusta von Anhalt-Zerbst, Kirche's father. You're welcome to just call me Wilhelm, to keep things simple. Come, let's get some drinks and snacks started. Lunch will be served shortly, anyhow." Wilhelm gestured toward the mansion, leading his guests to the stout, decorative doors that awaited them.


	97. Season 4 Chapter 14

Once inside, several of the butlers took the initiative and guided the group to a banquet room where a large, ornately carved oak table awaited them. Several maids standing along the wall launched into action, preparing their seating with glasses of wine and clean plates and siverware that gleamed in the abnormally bright candlelight.

Tails nodded in thanks as a maid pulled out a chair for him near the end of the table, taking a seat and drawing up his chair. Kirche took a seat to his left, across the corner of the table from her father, while the other three sat to his right. He refused a glass of wine as kindly as he could and sat patiently, waiting for the meal.

"So, what brings you back home, Kirche? Are your studies going well?" Wilhelm asked, spinning his wine around in its glass to fill the air with its scent. "You were saying good things last time, so I'd imagine them to still be true."

"They're just as good as usual, I suppose," Kirche replied as she unfolded a cloth napkin and set it in her lap. "Nothing's really changed. Lectures day in, day out. Rather easy, I suppose."

"And the boys are still treating you well?" he asked, grinning.

"As usual. There isn't much competition at my level," she answered, smirking in return. "It's a bit embarrassing at times, to be honest."

Wilhelm laughed, setting down his wineglass and clapping his hands together. "That's my girl! Germanian down to the bone, just like your mother!" He turned to his other guests and nodded in respect. "We like to joke that one of Germania's main export behind our beer is our women, for obvious reasons," he joked, nodding toward Kirche. "My daughter's as fine as they come, so there's no reason she wouldn't be in every man's dreams at the Academy."

Tails smiled, silently cringing on the inside. "It's almost like he's selling his daughter. Jeez…" he thought, silently unfolding his napkin and laying it in his lap. "I'd hate to be related to him."

"So! From what I can tell, you're a fine mechanic!" Wilhelm continued, taking a more serious tone. "That machine out there… Kirche says it was built by you… er, Tails, was it?"

"Yes sir," Tails said, raising his twin tails from behind his chair. "Tails is just a nickname my friends gave me a while back, for obvious reasons, but my real name's Miles Prower. You're welcome to use either, I suppose."

Wilhelm sat back in his seat, looking over the fox as food was laid out for the six of them. "You don't seem like much, but I'll take her word for it. I gather you're not from this world, either?"

"Yeah, I am. I'm trying to get home, but I need to find some things to do it. That's what I'm out here looking for."

"Well, you've come to the right man!" the burly man declared. "I don't see why I can't put out an order to find something for you. Even if it's not in my domain, one of the other heads of state will surely put out similar demands in his."

"Wait a second… Germania's a collection of states, right?"

"Not quite. We used to be independent states and city-states, but in order to become a world power we decided to unify the states into a single nation, with each baron or burgermeister serving as a member on a council. Anyways, what are you looking for, might I ask?"

Tails held out his hands to imitate the size of a Chaos emerald. "I'm looking for gems about this big. Symmetrical cut, brightly colored, and glowing. Have you seen anything like that?"

Wilhelm sat back in his chair and waved over a maid to his side. "Send for Angelika, tell her to bring the presents, avoiding my wife if possible," he muttered into her ear, sending her off. "I think I may have something similar to your description," he announced, returning his attention to Tails. "While we wait, let's eat before our food grows cold!"

The six ate in silence for several minutes until a new maid returned, holding a medium-sized box loaded with ornate gold embossings on the outside. Wilhelm set his silverware down and wiped his mouth before accepting the box, gently popping the latches on the front of the box before turning it toward Tails and setting it on the table. "Go ahead and open it! They're my pride and joy of gem collection."

Tails gently slid the box toward him and lifted the top back on its silent hinges. Inside, the Red and Yellow Chaos Emeralds sat cushioned against plush velvet, their glow pulsing brightly as they reacted off each other's presence. He gently closed the lid and pushed the box back toward Wilhelm. "Yep, they're exactly what I need. How did you find them?"

"Funny story, now that you ask," he began, picking up his silverware once more. "Two miners brought them to me from our iron mines, saying they were found on the property during their work session. They were scared witless, saying that they heard voices upon picking them up and believed them to be magic. Although they did have positive effects on some magician's capabilities, I think they're much more than magic… the fact that you're here for them proves that they have some value, doesn't it?"

Tails' eyes went wide at the mention of voices. "That's not unheard of, but rather uncommon. Normally, the Emeralds only respond to the Master Emerald, sort of like a chorus. The Emeralds have the power to show people the past, but also limited visions of the future. Perhaps they were guiding themselves somewhere?"

"Back to you, no doubt. However, I'm in a bit of a dilemma…" Wilhelm stated, taking a bite of his salad and clearing his throat with a sip of wine. "These are to be given to my wife as an anniversary present tomorrow. She's very fond of gems and keeps a rather large collection, so I don't think I could get it back from her once she has it. I don't believe I'll be able to find a suitable replacement in time."

"Dad, you can always just order her something from a goldsmith like a new pair of earrings or something. She always enjoys that. Where is Mom, anyways?" Kirche asked.

"Probably in her room messing with her alchemical work, no doubt. Half of the jewelry I give her ends up in her tests, anyhow…" Wilhelm muttered, rubbing his head. "Anyway. I would need something in compensation to give these up."

A lightbulb went on in Lèontine's head as she leaped from her chair. "Hey, what about if Tails builds you something? He's super smart and a great mechanic, right? Surely he could make you something."

Wilhelm rubbed his chin, contemplating the offer. "Very tempting, to me at least. Whether it will placate my wife, I doubt it. Her only interest is alchemy, not necessarily the end product she builds. She might not… say, that might just work."

"What?" Tails asked, slightly worried. professor Colbert's conversation with Osmond he had overheard long before rang in his mind, worrying him.

"Here's the plan. We'll host a friendly competition. One day to design, prototype, and build an item of defensive or offensive value. My wife will oversee the process of its creation. I'm sure getting to watch you work would interest her immensely," Wilhelm explained. "I fully expect you to win, but this way we'll both come out with something we need."

Tails shook his head. "I don't think I can do that. Not for a weapon, anyway. I've been instructed not to share designs, because Headmaster Osmond is afraid it would be too unbalancing."

"Come on, Tails!" Kirche urged. "Colbert's already been working with my dad. He built the Ostland out of stuff he saw with Saito's thing, right? Surely one more thing can't hurt, right?"

"Improve existing concepts," Tabitha offered. Tails looked over at her in surprise, but nodded in agreement after a moment's thought. "Yeah, I suppose that would work. I just need to think of something that'll win, but not take it too far…"

"So we're in agreement?" Wilhelm asked.

Tails nodded. "I suppose. What are the conditions?"

"We start tomorrow morning, right after breakfast," Wilhelm began. "I'll have you meet with one of my head designers and engineers, who you'll be competing against. As to the competition rules, you will be supplied with whatever materials you need, and you may use whatever tools or magic you wish. The end product, however, may not use magic to operate. If it is powered, such as with Colbert's Ostland, it must be by a source that is easily reproducible. Also, you will be building your device in secrecy from your opponent, naturally. My wife and I will be watching both contestants, but sharing nothing."

"Sounds fun. I'll be ready," Tails said. "Are my friends allowed to help me, since I can't use magic?"

"I don't see why not? As long as the idea is uniquely yours," Wilhelm replied.

The six promptly finished their meals in silence, followed by several minutes of idle chatter between Kirche and her father about her schooling and professor Colbert's progress in his research. Finally, several drinks later, Wilhelm stood up from his chair and collected the box with the Emeralds in it. "I'll be in my office doing paperwork. You're welcome to come and go as you please until dinner. My servants will lead you to your rooms, if you want to drop anything off before you head out." With that said, he exited the room, leaving the five to themselves. Several servants stepped forward to pull back their guests' chairs for them, collecting their empty plates and loading them onto a cart once Tails and the others were out of the way.

"If you would follow me, please," a well-dressed butler announced, waving Tails and the girls over to him. Kirche took the lead, ignoring the butler as she head off through one of the doors. "Headed to her own room, no doubt. Anyways, we will get you four situated in your rooms, this way," he said. He led the four through a short stretch of hallway, stopping at four doors that stood open and waiting as a maid promptly evacuated the hallway with a load of bedsheets. "These will be your rooms," the butler announced. "Each room is equally furnished, so you are welcome to split up how you like. Dinner will be at six sharp, so please do be on time. Good day, sir and madams."

Tails watched as the butler strolled down the hall and out of sight around the corner before focusing on the rooms. "Well, I'm basically headed right back out to go sweep the country in the Tornado. If you need any of your stuff, come get it now because it could take me a long time to get this done. Maybe multiple days, even."

"Eh, I think I'm gonna go for a flight myself," Lèontine said, looking over to Ilococoo. "Wanna come?"

"Sure!" she replied, letting out a short yawn. "I need to switch back or I might nap for a year, even after all that time in Tails' flying thing…"

"Tabitha?" Tails asked, turning toward the blue-haired girl. "Wanna come?"

Tabitha nodded, pointing her staff down the hall. "Let me fetch a book from Kirche's library," she said.

"I'll be napping in my room, so come get me when you're ready to go," Tails said, pointing at the open door on the far left. He stepped inside and shut the door, kicking off his shoes and leaving Ring in his sheath next to the doorframe. He was greeted by a well-decorated room loaded with red velvet furniture, including a dazzlingly embroidered bed quilt spread over a king-sized bed that called Tails name. "Best night's sleep, guaranteed," he thought to himself jokingly, walking over to the bed and flopping down face-first, sinking into the plush mattress. Spreading out over the massive bed, he shut his eyes and let his imagination fill the time, slowly slipping into sleep.

* * *

 

Tails rolled onto his back and sat up in bed at the sound of knocking from the door. He used his tails to launch off of the bed, jogging across the room to open the door. Tabitha stood waiting patiently, holding a couple books under one arm and her staff in the other. "Ready," she stated, gazing at the sleepy fox.

"Sure, one sec," he replied, rubbing his eyes for a moment before slipping on his shoes and shutting the door. "Did you want to grab a snack or anything before we go? My lunch was plenty big for me, but we can stop somewhere if you get hungry I suppose."

Tabitha shook her head and began walking down the hall toward the dining room, leaving Tails to quickly catch up. The two cut through the dining hall back to the main lobby, stopping only to let one of the door servants to open the front door for them. "Safe travels!" the young man said, pretending to tip a hat toward the two. "Shall we be expecting you again?"

"We'll be back this evening for dinner. About how long will that be?" Tails asked, pulling up his wristcomm.

"Six hours or so, I believe," the doorman said, ducking back inside to check a clock. "Yep, six and a half hours."

Tails cycled through his wristcomm's various apps, finding a timer and setting it for six hours. "Alright, we'll be off," he said, turning toward the Tornado where it sat in the center of the large, flat, grassy courtyard. He spun up his tails and flew up to the top of the Tornado, turning to help Tabitha up. When she was seated in the copilot's seat, he dropped down into his own seat and booted up the turbines, taking a moment to mess with some settings and don his headset before taking the controls in hand. He slowly opened up the throttle until the craft took to the air, accelerating forward with momentary bursts of the afterburner turbine. Only once the craft was well above the Zerbst property did he switch to flight mode, letting his seatbelt clamp down around him before gently easing up to speed.

Switching over to the Emerald radar caused several loud tones to erupt in his ear. "Owowow… well, at least it'll be easy to find our way home," Tails thought with a grimace as he reached to turn down the volume on his headset. The beeps slowly faded in volume and frequency as the craft sped away from the mansion, off toward the east according to the onboard compass. Flicking the craft into autopilot, he kicked back in his seat and began looking around, his eyes wandering over the endless craggy hills and evergreen forests that slid by as the Tornado streaked through the air…

* * *

 

"I wonder why Kirche doesn't study these books more often," Tabitha thought to herself, her eyes wandering over the descriptive texts and example equations of the physics journal she had borrowed from Kirche's father's library. "It might keep her from struggling so much in her non-magic classes…"

"Hey Tabitha," Miles' voice crackled from the headset mounted over her left ear. "Whats up? Not bored, are you?" he asked.

"No," she replied. It wasn't entirely true, but she didn't want to bother him any more than she had to. "Just riding along for some peace and quiet," she had told herself when she had made the decision to come earlier.

"Whatcha reading this time? Anything interesting?"

"Published physics journal."

"Neat! What topic?"

"Wave versus particle theories of light," she said, shutting the book. Now that Miles was talking to her on a science-related topic, she knew he wouldn't ever stop.

"Yeah! Fun stuff. Really trippy, quantum mechanics and stuff."

"Quantum… mechanics?" she said, raising an eyebrow inquisitively.

"Yeah. I'm assuming the book is arguing for either wave or particle theory, right? Turns out it's essentially both. It's a series of particles called photons essentially moving and acting with wave properties, affected by almost all of the laws of waves like diffraction and refraction, but with its own set of laws like the creation of positrons and whatnot. Maybe I'll get to show you under an electron microscope back at Uncle Chuck's lab in Mobotropolis sometime."

"There it is again. Always 'show you my world'. Why doesn't he get it that I can't go with him now?" Tabitha thought to herself miserably, her stockinged legs clamping tighter around her wooden staff. "Yeah," she muttered to avoid ignoring Miles.

"Hey, you ok back there? You sound tired. Do you want me to take you back to Kirche's place?"

"No."

"Is something the matter? I'm all ears. Well, rather about 10% ears, considering their size," Tails said, laughing at his own joke.

"No."

"Seriously, Tabitha, don't make me land this plane. What's wrong?... I'm guessing it's about your coronation, right?"

Tabitha sat silently, watching the landscape fly by below with incredible speed. She didn't feel like responding to his probing, hoping that he would stop and leave her be if she neither confirmed nor denied his statement.

After a moment, Tails continued. "Hey, you shouldn't worry about it, alright? I mean, yeah, becoming Queen of anywhere is a big deal, but I'm sure you'll be a great queen! Once I find my way home, I'm sure I'll be able to drop by for a visit every now and then. Maybe I'll even bring princess Sally with me to give you a few pointers. She's still a princess, but she was essentially a queen while her parents were missing, so I'm sure she can help you get things sorted out."

"Okay," Tabitha replied. On the inside, she sighed and shook her head slightly. "He still has no clue. 'Once in a while' isn't enough, damn it!" she thought, turning back to her book to take her mind off of him. "Maybe I can make him stay… No, that would be irresponsible. He has his friends to return to."

"You know, you don't have to become Queen if you don't want to," Ring said in her mind. "Tails left his sword back in the room, so I decided to jump into the Tornado. Just in case you were wondering why I'm here."

"That would be even more irresponsible of me. I owe it to mother and father, aside from the entirety of Gallia," Tabitha thought in reply, her eyes blankly scanning page after page without reading the words, formulas or diagrams.

"Taking the throne is a pretty big decision, like Tails said. Are you sure family debts are the biggest motive for that decision? You sure didn't think that when dropping an icicle on your head."

"What else would there be?"

"I dunno, committing your life to sitting on a chunk of cloth-covered metal and looking pretty, occasionally making decisions that affect hundreds of thousands of lives. Or… getting to spend the rest of your life in peace and quiet with the guy you like. Hint, most smart people would take the latter."

"And that's why I need to take the throne. If I don't, some squabbling, prideful baron will rise out of the idiocracy and try to take power, ruining the lives of Gallian citizens. I can't let that happen in good conscience."

"All that means is that you need to find someone you trust to take the throne. Then you're home free."

Tabitha shook her head. "Then I'd be leaving my friends behind."

"So is Tails. Not to be rude, but you've got what, Kirche? I'd be surprised if you said you consider Louise a friend. Saito, maybe. Hell, Partner's got everyone here. Everyone loves him, but he has to leave them all behind to go home. If you want to go, you should go before you make things more complicated."

Tabitha mulled over the thought, running through the multitude of hypothetical events that could unfold from either decision in her mind. "Perhaps it's not a decision to make right now. It can be dealt with when it's time to."

"Good thinking," Ring replied. "Now, just kick back and unwind or you'll kill yourself from the stress. Personally, I don't understand how you think reading textbooks is fun, but whatever works for you."

Tabitha sat back in her seat and cracked open the journal that sat on her lap, returning to the world of physics and science to idly pass the time.


	98. Season 4 Chapter 15

The Tornado touched down in the courtyard of the Zerbst manor once more, the golden machine coming to a silent rest as its turbines slowly spooled down. Tails popped the canopy and hopped out of his seat onto the edge of the Tornado, stopping to stretch before hopping down. He waited for Tabitha to hop down before proceeding toward the front door, held open for the two by the waiting doorman.

"Have a good time?" the young man asked, tipping his hat toward his guests.

"Well, we didn't find what we're looking for, but the scenery and weather was beautiful," Tails replied as he stepped out of the path of the massive door that slowly swung shut.

"Yup, weather sure was nice. Caught a few fish on my off-duty hour," the man said with a grin. "Must be nice to fly around like that. My brother got to ride a dragon once, but Herr Wilhelm promised that I could ride on professor Colbert's airship when he gets back."

"That'll make your bro jealous, for sure," Tails remarked as he continued to walk deeper into the mansion. "See ya!" he called back over his shoulder.

Reaching one of the many doors to the dining hall, Tails cracked open the door and peeked inside, noticing Wilhelm seated at his throne while carrying a conversation with a young boy no older than Tails was. He stepped into the hall and walked over to take his previous seat at the dining table, his presence ending the conversation between Wilhelm and the boy.

"Ah, Miles, there you are!" Wilhelm announced, standing from his chair. "I'd like you to meet your opponent for tomorrow's competition. This is Johann, the son of a close friend of mine. He's quite the inventor, and has developed several projects for us over the years."

"Hi!" Tails said, extending a hand. The young boy took his hand and locked eyes with him, giving him no more than a disapproving frown as he sized Tails up.

"Excuse his manners," Wilhelm said, taking a seat once more. "He's not much of a talker around new people. Spitting image of his father."

Johann broke off from the handshake and leaned over toward Wilhelm's ear, cupping his mouth with his hand for privacy. "Is this a joke?" Tails could hear him whisper, his large ears twitching in an attempt to focus in on the sound. "First that old man from Tristain, and now some beast? It's insulting."

At this, Wilhelm broke away from Johann and gave him a brutal stare that caused the boy to back down at once. He muttered something to himself as the boy bowed in respect, returning his attention toward his guests. "Pardon that. Just a private word Johann felt he had to share," Wilhelm said. "Anyhow, dinner will be served shortly. I'd expect Kirche to arrive soon. How are your other two friends?"

"They'll be back soon, I'd guess," Tails replied, faking a smile. "If they don't show up in time, I can head out and find them." The fox took his seat at the table and began unfolding his napkin, occasionally glancing across the table at Johann who had taken a seat on the opposite side. Tabitha took her seat next to Tails, setting her staff against the table and returning to her reading.

Several minutes of uncomfortable silence ensued before hors d'ouvres were brought out, followed by wine and varying kinds of beers. Wilhelm took a glass mug of beer and lifted it high, looking at the amber-colored liquid as the carbonation bubbles floated to the surface, distorting the light that travelled through it. "Germania makes some fine beers, Miles. Please, try one. You say you aren't a drinker, but they're very good."

"Thanks, but no thanks," Tails replied, taking a glass of water from the tray of a passing waiter. "Alcohol doesn't sit well with me."

"Suit yourself," Wilhelm said, taking a deep swig of his beer before setting the mug down. "Damn, where's Kirche? I thought I taught her better than this."

"Right here, old man!" Kirche announced as she burst into the room, the doors slamming shut behind her. "Sorry, I was busy with a chess match. Wittner's getting better than I thought." She strolled over and took her seat next to her father, taking up her mug of beer and taking a small sip. "Wrong keg, but whatever," she said, giving her dad an annoyed glare. "Make sure to open one of those lighter draughts next time."

"Maybe I would if you didn't get so caught up in chess around dinnertime so often," her father replied with a smirk, raising his glass to tap it against hers. "So, I'm assuming you still won?"

Kirche tapped glasses with Wilhelm and nodded. "I said Wittner was getting better, not beating me. Hey Tails, do you play chess?" she asked, turning to the fox as he took a bite of a small olive and cheese skewer.

"Mhmm," he muttered with a nod, swallowing the mouthful of food without chewing before attempting to speak. "I play a little bit whenever I could get any of my friends to sit down long enough, which is pretty rare. Risk is my favorite board game, though."

"Play a game with me after dinner? I could use more competition."

Tails shrugged. "Sure, I guess. I haven't played in a while, so I'm not sure how well I'll do."

"That's fine. I'm sure you're short-selling yourself," she replied. "Judging by what you've done in the past, anyways."

Eventually, an array of dishes was delivered, spread along the occupied length of the table for everyone to serve themselves. As soon as the serving platters hit the table, Wilhelm began doling out several scoops of some vegetable mix to his own plate. "Since you're new to Germania, you ought to try this, you four!" he stated, passing the serving platter down the table. "Sauerkraut is a specialty of ours, like beer. Goes great as a garnish with bratwurst and currywurst, too. Kirche likes some on her frikadelle, on occasion."

Tails served himself a small spoonful of the shredded cabbage dish, passing the sauerkraut platter to Tabitha before taking a bite. "Wow… yeah, this stuff isn't half bad!" he said. "Some of Sonic's favorite chilidog stands serve this stuff, but I've never tried it."

"Oh, so you have sauerkraut where you come from?" Wilhelm asked in surprise. "I suppose we at least have a few things in common, then. Try it on some of the smoked meats, it's fantastic."

Time slowly passed as Tails quietly worked his way through the massive meal that sat before him, listening to the odd conversations between the others and occasionally answering the odd question directed at him. Finally, long after he had finished his meal, Kirche stood up and stepped out from her chair. "I'll be back in the gameroom when you're ready, Tails," she said as she made her way back to the door she had arrived through.

"Coming," he said, pushing his chair back. He promptly excused himself and followed her to the next room over, lined with indoor games of all sorts. Pool tables of varying build qualities filled the center of the hall, with throwing-dart boards, croquet and polo sets, as well as several fencing rapiers and protective gear lining the walls. Kirche was preoccupied setting up marble and dark granite chess pieces on a matching board while the fox toured around the room, picking up a pool stick and plucking a couple balls from the closest corner pocket on one of the tables. He set the two balls on the table and took a moment to aim before taking the shot.

The loud clacking of ivory on ivory caught startled Kirche, catching her attention. "You like those? They're based on one of those things from Saito's world, I heard. One of these is actually one of the originals that was brought here."

Tails nodded, watching as the two balls headed for separate pockets. Only one managed to make it in, while the other ricocheted around the felt table silently. "Yeah, I can tell. I thought I saw a coin slot on one of them when I walked past. My friend Chris' parents were super wealthy and owned one. I got okay at it, sitting around in Chris' house all day, but Mr. Tanaka would smoke me any time he got to play."

"Sounds like you had a pretty sweet life, wherever that was," Kirche remarked. "Anyway, the board is ready whenever you are. Black or white?"

"I don't mind, whichever one you don't want will do," Tails said as he walked over to take his seat at the table, taking a look at the shining stone pieces. The dark, speckled granite pieces were closest to him, so Kirche simply took a seat on the opposite side of the board and made her first move, moving a central pawn forward two spaces. Tails, after spending several moments contemplating his moves, moved a pawn forward from its resting place on the right half of the board.

"So, have you thought about the competition tomorrow any?" Kirche asked, moving a pawn without bothering to look at the board.

"It's been in the back of my mind. I have a few ideas, so I'm not too worried about it."

Tails moved another pawn up. Kirche brought out her king-side knight. The granite queen-side bishop was moved up behind an exposed pawn. Elaborate walls of pawns and supporting auxiliary units began to form and approach each other before either side claimed a piece of another, entering a defensive lock as both sides refused to make the first assault against one another. Finally, Kirche used a pawn at the right-side edge of the board to take one of the pawns in Tails' wall, anticipating the next move.

"You know, Johann's better than you think. He may be just a kid, but he's beyond smart," she said, waiting for Tails to finish thinking over his moves. "I know you're smart, but… I think being handicapped by dad’s rules may mess you up. You should just ignore them."

Tails smirked, a sparkle of determination glowing in his eyes. "Wilhelm’s rules or no, I got this in the bag. Don't even begin to think otherwise." He moved one of the pawns in his wall to destroy the offending enemy piece, removing the marble pawn and setting it on his side of the board. "All I need to do is pick a project, and I'll be ready to go. I'm sure I'll smoke that little jerk right out of the competition."

"Wow, aggressive! I like it. Got something against Johann?" A marble bishop slid forward, positioned to take advantage of the gap made in Tails' wall.

"You probably couldn't hear it when he was whispering to your dad, but he called me and professor Colbert a joke. It wouldn't bother me as much if he said it to my face, but calling Colbert names really bugs me after seeing all he's done, especially with his half-assed attempt at being stealthy about it. Beside the fact that he's being a pompous jerk, judging his competition by looks or age." Tails readjusted a pawn, moving it forward to block the bishop and stall its attack. "I've got a few cards up my sleeve, so to speak. It won't be hard to show him how a real engineer gets it done."

"Good to hear. Care to share?" Kirche asked, moving her bishop back to keep it from being taken. She was eyeing the board carefully now, holding the bishop by the head for a lengthy period before deciding on a tile to set it upon.

Tails shook his head. "If Johann's in the next room over, I don't want to talk about it. He might get some ideas from somewhere other than his own oversized head." He pushed a rook out of the corner, preparing to move it closer to the center of the board on a future turn. Behind him, he heard a door silently click shut, followed by soft footsteps that approached him from behind. Tabitha appeared in his peripheral vision at his side, briefly overlooking the board.

"Hey, Tabitha! Glad you could make it. I think we should almost be done here," Kirche declared, moving a knight forward.

"We'll see," Tails replied, moving a pawn forward to advance his defensive line further. The two traded another fast and furious bout of moves, the board rapidly thinning out as Kirche moved on the offensive and occasionally lost some of her pieces in the process. Tails' defensive line held as he constantly re-arranged his pawns and supporting units to maximize coverage from one unit to the next, ensuring that any piece he lost could be instantly avenged. Soon, nothing was left on the board except a few supporting pieces on either team, scattered across the board as remnants of previous assaults.

Tails moved his queen forward diagonally to the left side of the board, providing a diagonal attack angle on Kirche's unmoved King. She positioned her remaining rook from the right side of the board into its path, lining up the rook with Tails' king.

"That's checkmate, I believe," Kirche said, standing up from her chair. "Good game! That was pretty tough there for a while."

Tails looked over the board, noting that she was right; his king was wedged between a knight on the front and right side, the defensive rook on the left and diagonal left, and a bishop settled above his queen. Only his left-side rook, queen, and white-tile bishop remained in play, corralling Kirche's king but in no position to kill. Suddenly, a thought hit him, reminding him of an old play he saw his friend Cream try once in a friendly game…

"Alright," he muttered, picking up his king. He slid the king two tiles to the left, moving his as-of-yet unmoved left-side rook to the space the king had skipped. "Take a seat, I'm not done yet."

Kirche eyed Tails warily, taking a seat. "Interesting…" she thought aloud as she reevaluated the board, planning her next move. With a sigh, she moved her bishop forward toward the center of the board, stopping two tiles in front of Tails' king.

Tails took her defending rook with his queen, setting the white castle among the graveyard of marble pieces. "Check, checkmate next turn," he announced.

"Well, I didn't think I'd see the day again… That was brilliant!" Kirche announced after surveying the board, standing up once more. "I can't remember the last time I've been beaten in a game. Then again, I'd expect nothing less from my little genius Familiar," she said, rustling Tails' hair as she walked past him. "Anyway, I'm headed to bed. You've got a big day tomorrow, so I suggest you get to bed too. Night!" With that, she stepped back into the dining hall, shutting the door behind her. Tabitha stayed behind and helped Tails clean up the chess board before returning to her own bedroom, leaving Tails in the pool hall.

"Bro, you coming to bed?" Ring's voice rang out in Tails' head. "Kirche's right, you're gonna be super busy tomorrow. You'll need sleep to be on your game for the entire day."

"Yeah, let me just clean up the pool table and I'll be right there," Tails thought in reply. He walked over to the pool table he had messed with earlier and slid the remaining ball back into a pocket. The cue stick he had used snapped nicely back into a small holder built onto the side of the table, well out of sight yet easily accessible. Satisfied that the room was clean, he began to backtrack through the hallways to his room, finding the door slightly ajar. Inside the candlelit room, he could see a small white letter nestled on his pillow, waiting for him. He kicked off his shoes and removed his gloves before walking over to take a seat on the bed, gently slipping the unsealed letter open with his finger and reading the letter aloud to himself.

_Miles,_

_I would ask if you could consider withdrawing from the competition tomorrow. It would severely hurt the reputation of the loser in either case, which I presume would still bother you regardless of your status as a Familiar. If you need the two gems which Wilhelm possesses, there is a possibility that I may be able to procure them for you only if you do not accept the challenge (as if you lose, you will have no other chance of earning them). Please contact me before the competition tomorrow if you wish to follow this route._

_Regards,_

_Johann_

"Eh, whatever. A nice gesture I guess, but I'm not gonna have him go steal them for me," Tails tossed the letter on a small nightstand next to the bed and quickly made his way around the room, blowing out all of the candles except for the one closest to the door. He shuffled back to bed and nestled up under the pre-warmed covers, rubbing his fingers together to help him get to sleep quickly…

* * *

 

All around Tails, sights and memories began to unfold in his mind as he dreamed. Scenes of his escape with Queen Henrietta from the airship after he had first arrived, forward in time with a sense of joy and then played in reverse with a sense of impending doom. They rewound up to when the fox had fired his T-Buster upon the incoming guards, killing them almost instantly as they fell to the ground in a convulsing mass of molten-metal-encased flesh and bone that melted and spread along the ground, enveloping the wooden walls around him.

Suddenly, the scene morphed from the wooden airship to the theater in Tristain, where Tails was advancing upon the mercenary gunmen along the balcony. Every time he fired upon the men, however, he could sense a weight pressing down on him harder and harder, until it felt like he were trudging along by the time he approached the huddled mass of men against the edge of the railing. Upon shocking them with a pulse with his T-Buster, the bodies fell to the ground without any warning, like ragdolls that had lost their support. Tails turned his back upon the mass, knowing full well what would happen next and yet unable to resist it, completely silent. He felt the cold circle of steel pressed against his back and turned his head over his shoulder to see the last gunman trapped beneath the pile of bodies, his torso sticking out. His arm that held the pistol to Tails' back was stretched supernaturally long, and his eyes were nothing but darkness that captivated the fox with an indescribable terror. With a deafening crack, Tails felt that same pain once more that sent him crashing to his knees, but he didn't stop falling once he hit the floor as the plush theater carpet gave way to a dark abyss. Unable to speak, he felt trapped in the eternal fall as his strength drained, the weight on his body increasing and driving him faster and faster as he fell…

Tails shot up from bed, eyes wide and his breathing fast and heavy. His gaze immediately fixated on the glowing candle, the golden flame flickering in his eyes amongst the darkness of the room as his eyes dilated to match the light level of his surroundings. He took a moment to hold his breath, forcibly lowering his heart rate in an attempt to calm himself. Suddenly, the door cracked open and briefly flooded the corner of the room closest to the door with candlelight from the hallway. He could make out someone stepping in, quietly shutting the door behind them. Once his eyes recovered from the temporary brightness, Tails could make out Tabitha standing by the door in her night gown, her glasses reflecting the candle's flame as a small speck of light in each lens.

"Oh, hey Tabitha," he said, pushing himself back against the headboard of the bed. "What's up? Couldn't sleep?"

Tabitha nodded and walked over to Tails' bed, walking around to get in on the other side. Tails watched her closely, waiting to see if she would announce anything of her own volition, but she never spoke. "Is something on your mind? I can't really sleep either, so, yeah…" he offered.

She looked over at him for a moment, then down at the sheets in front of her, and then back at him. "Can I go with you when you go home?" she said, her soft voice amplified by the silence of the room.

Tails grinned and put a hand over her shoulder. "Of course! There's tons of stuff you could learn, lots of stuff to show you. I could introduce you to all my friends. You'd love them, I bet! There's the Blue Typhoon, so we could visit other planets, and build stuff, and-"

"You wouldn't stop me?" she asked, still watching him closely.

Tails, caught off guard by her question, looked over at her and could see the seriousness in her eyes that promptly shut him up. "Oh… I see," he said, nodding in acknowledgement of her problem. "This is still about the coronation, isn't it? Hey, you're the princess here. This is your life you're talking about. Once you give up the throne, that's it. I can't make that decision for you, and I don't even have a clue where to begin to help you make it. All I can say is, that whatever decision you make, I'll stand by it. You've got a good track record of making decisions, so just do what feels right to you."

Tabitha nodded, but her eyes never left his. "Why were you up?"

"Oh…" he replied, rubbing the back of his head. "Bad dream. Nothing big."

"About?"

Tails slumped down against his pillows, sinking deeper into the sheets. "Just… flashbacks of some of the people I've killed. People I was in close proximity to when they died. That time I got shot at the theater in Tristain. I saw the guy's face, but it was… grotesque, supernatural. It looked almost like a Black Arms soldier had stretched a human-shaped face mask over their head. Then I got shot, and I fell for a while and then I woke up."

"You couldn't find the logic?"

"What?... Yeah, I guess so," he replied, remembering those words he had said to her at Henrietta's ball that night. "At the time, I was just on some rampage mode…where I thought I had a justified cause, but took it too far in hindsight. Heck, I probably could have done it some better way than that. Then I wouldn't have wasted your time trying to heal me."

Tabitha took off her glasses and reached across Tails to set them on the nightstand. When she was done, she crawled deeper into the covers and just stared at him for a moment with her deep blue eyes before briefly hugging him, surprising him. "Hey, thanks Tabitha," he replied, receiving the embrace. "Anyways, I need to get some sleep for tomorrow. Thanks for talking." She nodded and released him, returning to her side of the bed and flipping over to face the other wall. Tails lifted his head to fluff up his pillows with his hand before laying his head back again, drifting back into sleep after several brief thoughts.


	99. Season 4 Chapter 16

Tails woke to the sound of heavy footsteps out in the hallway, startling him from his light sleep. He withdrew his tails from being draped over Tabitha's stomach and gently pushed the covers back, stepping out of bed and walking over to the door. Pulling the door open slightly, he could see several servants dressed in work clothes carrying heavy poles, tarps, and cables in teams of two to three through the hallway. "Must be setting up for the event," he thought, gently closing the door. Behind him, he could hear Tabitha slowly stirring awake, sitting up in bed to fetch her glasses when she was done rubbing her eyes. "Morning, Tab. Sleep well?" Tails asked.

Tabitha nodded and stepped out of bed, pausing to step into a pair of slippers she had been wearing the night before. She walked over to the door and stepped outside, returning to her room to get dressed properly. Down the hall, Lèontine and Ilococoo stepped out of their rooms simultaneously, dressed and ready for the day. They greeted each other with a nod and a smile before paying any attention to what was going on around them. "Morning, Tails," Lèontine said as she watched the servants slowly haul massive wooden posts along the hallway. "Ready for the competition?"

"You bet!" he replied with a nod. "I'm gonna need your help with it, if I'm going to get it done within the day, though. All four of you, actually."

"Well, I'm not sure how much help I'll be, but sure!" she replied. "Anyways, food first. I'm starving."

The three stood around until Tabitha emerged from her room, re-dressed in a fresh school outfit and carrying her staff and a new book, likely from Kirche’s father’s library. Tails led the way to the banquet hall, where Kirche, Wilhelm and Johann were already beginning to eat. Across from Kirche sat a new lady with cherry-red hair, caramel skin and a bright smile like Kirche. As soon as the fox stepped into the room, she set her cutlery down and hopped out of her seat to walk over and greet him.

"You must be Miles! I've heard great things about you from professor Colbert and my husband. It's a pleasure to meet you," she said, bowing to him in respect. "My name's Angelika von Anhalt-Zerbst."

"A pleasure to meet you," Tails replied, nodding toward her and waiting for her to return to her seat before taking his own. Before him, a large banquet was laid out before him, composed of several kinds of toasts and sugary breakfast breads combined with sausage, bacon, eggs, fruit and more. When the other three girls had taken their seat, he began to load up his plate and dig into the eggs.

"It feels weird to not be putting Tabasco on eggs, since we don't have it," he thought to himself as he slowly chewed, waiting for something to happen at the table. However, Wilhelm continued to carve his way through a mound of sausage and eggs silently, almost ignoring his guest's presence.

"So, you ready to begin after breakfast, Tails?" Kirche asked, her plate already thoroughly cleaned despite having started with a reasonably-sized portion. "I would be pretty nervous if it were me."

"I think I'm ready, more or less. I just need to get some tools out of the Tornado and I'll be good to go. Speaking of which…" Tails said, turning to face Wilhelm. "I plan to have my friends help me in the construction, since I can't use magic. Just the five of us, for occasional assistance."

"That's fine," Wilhelm managed to say through a mouthful of food, hastily rubbing his face with a cloth napkin. "Johann will be having a man or two to assist him as well, to keep competition fair. We'll start when all of you are done with your meal."

"I'm going to head out now. Don't be too long, please," Johann said, stepping back from his empty plate. He promptly disappeared through the door that headed toward the main foyer where the servants were seen to be headed with the supplies earlier, leaving the rest of the group to finish their meals. Tails promptly cleaned his plate as fast as he could before saying thanks for the meal and darting for the door. The doorman yanked the heavy front door open as fast as he could as the fox dashed through the foyer, not stopping for anything. Outside, he could see two large white canvas tents set up behind the X Tornado, door flaps held wide by a series of small removable pins. Johann was waiting outside, admiring Tails' jet in silence.

"Thanks for being prompt," Johann said, not looking away from the Tornado. "So, I presume you have no plans to cancel the competition?"

"Nope, sorry about that. I did get your letter, by the way," Tails said, walking over to the side of the Tornado and popping open the tool hatch with the keypad. He withdrew his large red toolbox and set it on the ground, popping it open to give it a quick inspection before closing it once more. "Reputation doesn't bother me in the slightest, and I'd rather not have you risk yours by trying to steal them for me. I appreciate the offer, though."

"Suit yourself," Johann replied indifferently. "Maybe you WILL mind when you'll be walking out of here without those gems. Don't say I didn't warn you, nor tried to help you." With that, Johann disappeared into his tent, withdrawing the pins from the inside to close the weighted flap with a sudden clap as the two flaps seemed to seal shut.

"What a jerk," Ring said, bursting into Tails' mind unexpectedly. "If I had hands, I'd reach out and smack that little shit."

"Don't," Tails replied. "Do it with a shield and you might take his head clean off. Let's just show him up and call it a day."

"So, what new toys will you have for me by the end of the day? Swords, blunt weapons, ranged stuff?"

"Ranged. I'll tell you when I debrief everyone inside. I'm gonna go check out my workspace." Tails picked up his toolbox and stepped into the white tent, surveying the space. Inside, a small smithy was set up with an exhaust chimney sticking out of the back of the tent, complimented with several workbenches, stools, and smithing tools. Otherwise, the room was relatively clean and ready to be re-arranged however he liked. "Looks like a good little space. A little bare, but nothing magic can't make up for," he thought. He set his red toolbox on the workbench and began unpacking his tools, laying them out in groups by type for easy access. When the box was totally unpacked, he pulled up a stool and began doodling away on his HUD tool's CAD program while he waited, his fingers flying over the holographic screen in sudden bursts of inspiration as he rushed to capture ideas that swam through his head…

* * *

 

Several minutes later, Wilhelm and his wife and guests stepped out of the dining hall and began to make their way over to the tents. "Seems like they've already started working," he stated, noting that both doors were closed. "Inventors never stop, I suppose. Anyways, I suppose you four are welcome to step into Miles' tent and give him a hand. My wife will join you to oversee things. Give Miles my regards!"

With that, Wilhelm walked over to the left tent and walked in, sealing the flap behind him with the pins used to hold the door open. "So, I guess Tails needs us now?" Kirche thought aloud. Ilococoo dashed forward to hold the tent flap open for the other four women to file in, taking seats on stools and tables around the room while the yellow fox continued to work away at his desk on some unseen project. Kirche let out an abrupt cough to catch his attention.

Tails whirled around on his stool, turning to face his audience. "Alright guys, thanks for coming. I've got the drafting done, so we can proceed with production once we get the supplies. That's where you two come in," he said, pointing toward Tabitha and Kirche. "I'll need you two to help with your alchemy. There's a lot of materials I need that we can't get otherwise, so we'll have to work on that."

"What about us?" Lèontine asked, nodding toward Ilococoo. "We can help, right?"

"Of course! You guys will help with construction. You're strong, so you can help hold things down while I cut stuff, or help run grab materials. One of the servants popped in here to tell me that I can't leave this tent, so it's up to you two to get supplies from the outside. I'll be keeping Kirche and Tabitha busy with their magic, and you're stronger anyway, so I'll just leave it to you two."

"Got it! You can count on us for that," Lèontine said, giving Tails a thumbs-up. "So, what's the plan?"

Tails picked up his HUD and brought it closer for the women to see. "Here's what I've got in mind," he said, swiping through the several diagrams he had drafted up.

"…And that is?" Kirche asked, raising an eyebrow as she watched the documents scroll by on the display with fascination.

"This is an MP-MGL, or Multi-Purpose Multiple Grenade Launcher system," he explained, swiping back to a diagram of the launcher from a side view. "It's essentially an oversized revolver that launches high or low-velocity grenades. In theory, anyway. I'm not sure if we'll be able to make nitroglycerin or nitrocellulose, so we'll be building one with a longer barrel so we can still reach high velocities using black powder, which is something you guys already have. The launcher is a six-shot semi-automatic weapon, so you can fire it as fast as you can pull the trigger. The shells…" he continued, swiping over to a new diagram, "… Are really simple. The basic high-explosive fragmenting shell is an explosive in a cylindrical metal case with a paper head in the shape of a bulb on the tip that's relatively hollow, filled with a little bit of explosive as a primer. The paper is lined with flint bits on the inside, which impacts the steel face of the explosive casing and creates a spark that ignites the primer. The explosion follows through a small hole in the casing, igniting the primary explosive and creating a large blast which, when complimented by shrapnel from the case, should create a rather large blast radius. All of that is loaded into an even bigger metal cylinder that forms the casing that's loaded with propellant, which means disposable cartridges that can also be reloaded.. There's also a flechette shell that turns the weapon into a large blunderbuss, and a few colored phosphorous rounds for battlefield illumination. I also toyed with the idea of making an incendiary shell, but fire magic makes that sorta redundant and it'd be a bit complicated, so I left that out for now."

"...Wow, that's amazing!" Ilococoo exclaimed in total awe. "And I thought this weird device you were using was cool!"

"Yeah, no kidding," Kirche added.

Lèontine unbuttoned the cuffs of her shirt sleeves and pushed them up to her shoulders. With a blinding flash of light that filled the tent, her arms transformed into their muscly, brown-feather-coated counterparts. "So, where do we start?" she asked.

Tails backed out of the blueprinting program on his HUD and switched over to a word processing application. After hastily typing up a list of materials, he withdrew a piece of parchment from a drawer in the provided workbench and held the device a foot over the paper, bracing against the table top with his elbows. With a quick press of a button, the scanning laser began sweeping up and down on the parchment, slowly burning the words of the document onto the paper in a black and white print over several sweeps. When the printing was done, he set the device down and gave the parchment a quick shake to remove any ash before handing it to Lèontine. "It's a bit of stuff, but I'm not sure how much we'll need of everything. If I guessed the alchemical conversion rates right, this should be enough plus a bit more for everything we need."

Lèontine nodded. "We'll be right back. This shouldn't take more than a few trips. Come on, Ilococoo," she said, waving toward the door. The two girls disappeared through the flaps of the tent, leaving Kirche and Tabitha waiting patiently as Tails returned to his drafting program.

"Tails, quick question," Kirche asked, pointing toward his HUD device. "Why do the projectiles look like throwing darts? Couldn't you get a bigger blast radius if the dart filled the entire casing?"

"I could," Tails said with a shrug, "but it'd reduce the accuracy by a boatload. We could get it back by adding rifling to the barrel, but that increases production costs because the tools necessary aren't exactly readily available. You'd need magicians to make them because of the interior work is more complicated. While these projectiles aren't as easy to make, it's far and away more cost efficient to put the bulk of the per-shot costs on the projectile for now, rather than the weapon, since we’ll only be making a few shells. Otherwise, we'd have to do barrel changes, which increases cost. Smoothbore weapons are easier to maintain, and pitting isn't as big of a deal."

"Reliable, too," Tabitha added, nodding. "Less fouling issues."

"Exactly. The next round sits almost flush to the barrel as it passes through, so it pushes out the residue from the previous shot as it goes. It lowers the velocity of the subsequent shots by a tiny bit, but that's more preferable than loss of accuracy if the rifling becomes clogged. Smoothbore rounds that are perfectly flush also make a better airtight seal with the barrel, so it gets more out of the powder combustion."

Suddenly, Angelika burst into applause with small, polite clapping. "Absolutely marvelous! Now, I have a few questions of my own. You talk of this "nitrocellulose" and "nitroglycerin". What are they, exactly?"

"Good question," Tails said, turning back to his HUD and scrolling back through the blueprints to the diagram of the dart-like shells. "They're two different kinds of propellants that are used in weaponry because they generate only a fraction of the residue of black powder. That means no smoke to obscure the shooter, and less fouling to jam up semi-automatic or automatic weaponry. It also has much more stored chemical energy, so you get more for less."

"And where did you study alchemy? You said you knew how many resources it would take to build this, yet you needed alchemy to produce it?"

"Well, I was just thinking of something that I told professor Colbert a while back, that alchemy is just chemistry with magic. If it's true, then I can just use chemical formulas to figure out how much of each base element I need to form the compounds I want, and then just tell Kirche or Tabitha to simply combine them. If I get the proportions right, it should come out perfectly every time. Heck, alchemy might even go to the atomic level, in which things get even easier because it simplifies to three ingredients, more or less."

"Interesting… I love alchemy. It's always been my life passion, but it's hard to talk about sometimes because so few magicians focus on it. Jean Colbert is one of the few men I've seen as excited about alchemy as I am, but it seems we've found another today," Angelika remarked.

After several minutes of waiting, Lèontine finally returned with several hefty steel bars in her arms. Outside, Tails could see Ilococoo, now in her dragon form, waiting patiently with a number of oil barrels wrapped up in her wings and arms. "You sure ordered a lot of stuff, Tails," Lèontine said as she tried to catch her breath, dropping the bars on the workbench with a loud clang.

"Yeah, but it'll be just what we need to show Johann how it's done," the fox replied with a grin. "Thanks for bringing everything. Let's begin!"


	100. Season 4 Chapter 17

Standing in front of the blazing furnace, the yellow fox slowly fed a large bar of raw iron into the input door with the help of Lèontine, waiting for the magically-fueled appliance to slowly melt down the metal into a heavy crucible below. When the bucket filled, he pulled the remainder of the iron bar out of the furnace and donned a pair of thick leather gauntlets over his normal Mobian synthetic gloves before carefully hoisting the heavy pail from the furnace's output door near the ground.

On a central table lay a magically-fortified clay shaping mold that lay empty, waiting to be filled. Kirche and Tabitha stepped back from the table to avoid splashing as Tails began to pour the molten iron into the mold, filling the mold almost to the brim. When the liquid metal settled into the mold, Kirche stepped forward and withdrew her wand, giving it a quick flick. A large pile of gold coins and a handful of small gems floated out of her purse and gently descended below the surface of the liquid iron, causing the liquid to sputter from the sudden temperature change. When the liquid re-settled, Tabitha stepped forward and joined in with Kirche as she began to chant a spell. The molten liquid suddenly flashed bright white, blinding the occupants of the tent but not stopping the two girls from chanting. Tails blindly groped around for the other half of the clay mold and, upon finding it, clamped it down over the rapidly expanding pool of liquid, sealing it within the rectangular-cased mold. Upon regaining his vision, he could see rivulets of molten titanium alloy flowing out of a small hole he had drilled in the bottom of the case, forming a small pool in a small clay catching pool built into the bottom half of the mold.

"That was awesome, guys!" Tails exclaimed, removing both sets of gloves and wiping his forehead with the back of his furry hand. "That should be the last of the forging for the large parts. Kirche, did you and Tabitha finish up with all of the small pins and firing mechanism parts?"

"Yep!" Kirche said as she set her wand down. "Tabitha beat me through all of her work and helped me with mine. They're all over on the table over there."

"Perfect. If Tabitha's done with all of the chemicals, then that should be it for you guys. You can go grab something to snack on, if you want. This could take a while," Tails explained. He waited patiently as Lèontine, Ilococoo, Kirche and her mother filed out of the tent, with Tabitha taking a back seat and waiting patiently for the next steps. Seeing that she wasn't going anywhere, Tails turned back to the workbench and took a seat, pulling together several small bags of chemicals that she had synthesized for him. He began collecting several of the parts for the individual projectiles and began assembling them, starting with the thick parchment tips by lining them with glue and flint chunks. While the glue dried, he began filling the cone with the thick, clay-like explosive paste that Tabitha had made from treated gunpowder, napalm and gelatin under his instruction. With the cone full, he sealed it with another small metal cap with a single hole drilled in the center and began attaching the thin metal fins one by one.

"Will it work?" Tabitha asked, now standing over Tails's shoulder to observe his work.

"It seems sound, in theory. Problem is, we can't really do a live test in confined spaces like this. I can't leave the tent, either…" Tails replied. With the fins complete, he set aside the dart and took the thick parchment with flint glued to it, pressing it into a small metal cup. When the parchment was fully compressed into the bowl with the jagged flint facing outward, he tossed a few pinches of gunpowder crystals into the paper dome and lined the parchment around the edge of the cup with glue. He quickly pressed the metal dome over the circular base of the explosive-filled cone, holding it for thirty seconds to let the glue settle and hold the parchment in place. When the glue was set, he gingerly removed the metal dome, exposing the paper bulb. A quick tap on the parchment demonstrated its resilience, holding firm under gentle prodding.

"Well, that's the general idea of the projectile," he said, holding up the teardrop-shaped explosive for Tabitha to see. She took the dart from him and held it close to her face, observing every minute detail. "Now we need to test it, but I'm not sure how…"

Tails looked around the tent, seeing if he could devise a method of testing the explosive. His eyes wandered until he noticed a small hole burned in the bottom of the tent near the furnace, presumably where a small drop of liquid metal had splashed out and burned through the heavy fabric.

"Got it!" he exclaimed. He rushed over to the pile of smithy tools and plucked a heavy inscribing chisel from the stack. He jabbed the sharp metal tool through the heavy fabric and began tearing a small slit in the fabric, followed by two more, larger slits. "Tabitha, come here! Bring your staff and the bomb," he said, excitedly waving Tabitha over. "I want you to levitate the explosive outside and give it a good, fast toss. We can watch from in here!"

Tabitha nodded and grabbed her staff, setting the hand-sized bomb on the table. With a brief chant, the bomb levitated into the air and proceeded through the largest of the new cuts in the fabric. She walked over to one of the viewing slits next to Tails and gently spread it apart with her left hand to get a good view. Outside, the bomb hovered in the air, waiting expectantly.

"Go for it," Tails said. "Make sure it goes far so we don't catch any shrapnel. This cloth definitely won't stop it."

With a short flick of her staff, the bomb shot forward through the air, past the Tornado and well into the open courtyard beyond. Tails began counting the time in his head once the projectile disappeared from view in the distance. Suddenly, a loud blast and flash of fire ruptured the air beyond the Tornado, followed by the tinkling sound of hot metal shards raining down around the tents. He could see small glimmering chunks of hot metal bouncing off of his mecha and falling to the ground, some smoking with residual gunpowder that still slowly burned.

After a moment of silent awe, Tails leaped into the air, shaking his fists with joy. "It worked! I can't believe it! There're so many places that could have gone wrong but it worked and we NAILED IT!" he rambled, giving Tabitha a brief hug followed by a war cry and victory lap around the central table. Behind him, Kirche, Ilococoo, Lèontine and Angelika burst into the tent, surprised to see the fox so filled with glee.

"I head the boom," Lèontine said, "so does that mean it worked?"

"The projectile worked, yeah!" he responded, slowly calming himself down. "Now we just need to cut out the individual parts of the gun frame, drill holes, pin it all together and make a few more test projectiles."

"You aren't going to have enough time, though!" Kirche stated. "It's already past lunch and we've only made one shell that you just used!"

"Don't worry, we'll be fine. I just need you guys to keep doing what you were doing and leave the assembly to me. I'll finish up the gun while you two make more chemicals," Tails said, pointing toward the workbench. "Since you have all of the pins and hinges done, you can just focus on chemicals." He turned to the clay mold that sat on the central table and grabbed the top half in both hands. With a bit of pounding, shaking, and assistance from Lèontine, the top half popped off, exposing the semi-completed launcher that gleamed silver in the light.

Tapping it quickly to ensure that the metal was cool enough to handle, he picked up the hefty gun-shaped chunk out of the mold and set it on the table. He then drew his T-Buster and, after dialing in the precise width of the plasma cutter blade, began trimming up the metal frame and cutting out individual pieces for drilling. With a couple slow cuts, the central block Tails intended to be the revolving magazine fell out which he promptly began drilling holes in with his cutter, allowing the liquid titanium to drain free back into the mold. With the holes for the revolving magazine drilled and cooling, he focused his attention on the receiver frame, slicing the gun in half and hollowing out the inside to make room for the trigger assembly and firing mechanism. Laying the empty trigger housing on the workbench, he slowly began assembling the trigger assembly and firing pin assembly, inserting them into the housing as he completed them. With the final parts in place, he carefully drilled a hole through the entire assembly and inserted a small cylindrical pin to hold it all together. He stowed his T-Buster in hammerspace with a button on his wristcomm and gently picked up the still-lukewarm metal. A quick squeeze of the trigger resulted in a paltry click as the bolt and firing pin slid forward on its track, slapping into the stops at the end of the track.

"Well, that works. Now to connect it to the drum magazine," Tails muttered to himself as he gently pressed on the bolt face, pushing the bolt back into primed position against the spring and locking it in place with another click. He picked up the stock and trigger assembly and pinned it back onto the magazine and barrel housing assembly with more drilling and pins.

As he wavered in and out of total concentration, Tails noticed that the room had gone nearly dead silent except for noise from the neighboring tent. He looked up to see Ilococoo and Lèontine curled up on a table together, deep in sleep. Across the tent from them, Kirche and Tabitha were seated on their stools, slumped over the work they had been doing and totally knocked out. Even Kirche's mother was firmly asleep where she sat, leaning heavily against the fabric of the tent wall.

"Hey, guys, you okay?" Tails whispered, a note of panic creeping into his voice. He hopped up from his seat and walked over to Lèontine, giving her a quick shake on her shoulder. "Hey, wake up! Stay with me here!" he whispered in her ear. After receiving no response other than an embarrassingly loud snore from Angelika, he rushed over to Tabitha and gently lifted her head. "Come on, Tabitha! I need you guys!" he said, removing her glasses and wiping some loose gunpowder flakes from her face with his hand.

"Shit, they're out cold," he thought to himself. "Couldn't have been CO2 or monoxide from the furnace or I'd be out too. Maybe someone messed up on a transmutation and it hit this side of the room first?" He gently ran his finger through the bowl of gunpowder that Tabitha had been working on and held it to his nose to take a short sniff. "Nothing… Hey Ring, you getting any of this?" Tails thought.

Silence.

"Ring, talk to me. You there?" he thought again, looking around the room.

Nothing but silence greeted Tails again. He tossed up his hands in frustration and returned to his bench, working furiously away at the launcher. "I swear, if I find that smug little shit Johann had anything to do with this, I'm gonna throw him from a tower," he cursed in silence, hacking and drilling away at the to-be weapon with tedious precision as his mind boiled with anger.

* * *

 

Finally, after completing the magazine rotation mechanism, it was time to install the barrel. He crept over to Kirche's seat at the workbench and gently retrieved the barrel she had completed, peering down the length of the mirror-smooth steel interior to ensure it was right. Satisfied with her work, he gently slid it into the front of the gun, pressing it flush against the drum magazine. "Now I just need to weld the barrel in place, without heating up the barrel too much…" He thought to himself. "Would be easier if Kirche could help, but I think I can use some of the leftover titanium to backfill around the barrel for an easy weld. But it might constrict the barrel or mess up the accuracy if it doesn't backfill evenly. Crap… Well, not much of an option, I suppose."

He brought up his T-Buster and began using the plasma cutter blade to liquefy the excess titanium he had left over with the plasma cutter blade, allowing it to pool up in the clay basin. When he was ready, he stowed his T-Buster and rushed over to the furnace, grabbing the smelting crucible and hauling it back to the table. "Gonna need one of these," he thought, pulling his T-Buster back up and withdrawing a Power Ring from the storage slot. When he activated the Ring, he stowed the T-Buster once more and picked up the clay mold, pouring the titanium into the crucible and setting the mold back down.

"Now, for the magic touch," he joked to himself, picking up the launcher and setting it across the top of the clay mold so that the titanium could safely drip. He picked up the crucible and began pouring it over the launcher where the barrel met the frame, flipping the launcher over to pour metal on the other side of the barrel. When all of the titanium was poured, he set the crucible down and began slowly spinning the weapon like a rotisserie, ensuring that none of the titanium dripped or flowed unevenly as it cooled.

When the metal cooled enough, he popped the rotary magazine out of the gun to check if the titanium had flowed all the way back. To his surprise, small beads of cooled metal had formed around the barrel where it ended next to the magazine. "Didn't think it would make it back this far. That's good," he mumbled. "While that cools, I suppose I can get on with the projectiles if there's enough loose materials." In the corner of his eye, he noticed Kirche's purse sitting on the workbench next to her, a glimmer of gold shining back at him. "But first, some personal touches…" he said with a grin.

* * *

 

After several hours of mindless work, the girls in the tent finally began to stir. Tails slid out of his seat and walked over to Tabitha and Kirche and gave them a quick shake by their shoulder to wake them up. "Hey, you guys were out for quite a while," he said over his shoulder as he walked over to wake the other three. "Not feeling sick or anything, are you?"

"Wha… Nah, I'm good," Kirche said with a yawn, arching her back to stretch out after being bent over the table for hours. "How much time do we have left?"

Tails shrugged. "No clue. Probably not much. I used what stuff you guys had already made to keep working, but it's not quite everything. If it's almost time, we may just have to call it a day on extra projectiles. I managed to get three high explosive, two flechette and one phosphorous shell done before we ran out of time." He gently shook Lèontine on the arm, but she refused to stir. "Lèo, come on. It's time to get up," he said in her ear.

Suddenly, Lèontine reached out and grabbed Tails' arm and attempted to pull him close as she mumbled something incomprehensible in her sleep. He tried to break free, but her talon-tipped paws were locked tight around his arm. She slid over the table as Tails backed up, letting go only as she fell to the floor after being dragged over the edge. "Owww… What the hell…" She muttered, gently rubbing her head. "All I wanted was five more minutes, jeez…"

"Sorry," Tails replied as he helped her to her feet. "You grabbed onto my arm in my sleep. You okay?"

Lèontine paused to dust off her shirt and skirt with the back of her feathery paws. "Yeah, I'm fine. Sorry I fell asleep. You know how it is."

Tails shook his head. "Well, to be totally honest, I don't. All of you fell asleep practically at once, which made me think it was a noxious gas from the furnace or transmutation, but…" he said, pointing at Kirche's mother, "…it doesn't explain why it hit you, across the room, but not me when I was dead-center."

"So you're saying it's magic or a potion?" Ilococoo chipped in while she rubbed the sleep from her eyes.

"I don't think it's a potion. No one's been in here but us, and you guys didn't bring any food in with you. If it went airborne, then again, it would have hit me. Magic is an option," he explained.

"No, it's not," Kirche said. She walked across the tent to rouse her mother, gesturing to the tent walls as she went. "We've used these tents before, usually as command rooms during a war, so they're super-heavily enchanted. We bartered for them from the elves. They have their signature nullification magic that prevents spells from targeting anyone inside the tent, or outside if the attacker is inside. The user would have to be inside."

Tails took a seat up on the workbench, looking around the room. "So they had to be in here at one point to use it… But that's not possible if the tent is pinned shut, right?"

Tabitha silently stepped forward and tapped Tails on the shoulder with her staff, pointing toward the tent wall by the furnace. "Holes," she said.

Suddenly, the truth dawned on him. "Crap, you're right! I'm an idiot!" Tails exclaimed, audibly facepalming in regret. "When I tested the shell earlier, I had to cut some holes in the tent to launch the shell out of and see from. They could've stuck their wand thing through the hole and knocked you guys out."

Kirche froze, her eyes wide as she turned to face Tails. "You… You WHAT?!" She yelled, dropping her mother from shock. She put both hands to her face to massage her forehead, trying to relieve some invisible pain. "Oh god, my dad's gonna kill you. Even if it's just a few quick stitches or magic to fix, he's going to bury you alive."

"Hey, you didn't notice, so maybe he won't either," Lèontine added. "At least, until we get it fixed anyway. It can't be that hard to fix, right?"

On the ground, Angelika began to stir, mumbling to herself in some unintelligible language. Kirche quickly picked her mother up and set her back on the stool before returning her attention to Tails. "Do you at least have the… whatever-you-call-it thing done?" she asked.

"Yup!" Tails said, reaching down below the central table to pick up the launcher. He held the gleaming silvery launcher, now thoroughly decorated with a fine gold inlay of his signature twin-tail logo on the central frame of the launcher. Several other gold decorative lines covered the silvery launcher, giving it a graceful yet modern appearance. "I took some more gold coins from your purse and melted them down for the embossing. I'll pay you back later for them. The shells are down here," he added, setting the launcher on the table to bend down and fetch the six shells.

"Wow, it's beautiful!" Ilococoo said, her gaze fixed on the gorgeous weapon. "What else do we need to do? It looks done."

"Well, it IS done. It'd be nice to build some more shells, but I think we are almost out of time. Could one of you go check with a butler or something to see if we have any more time?"

"I'll go," Tabitha offered. She picked up her glasses from the workbench and grabbed her staff before unpinning the tent door flap and stepping outside. Inside, Tails hardly had thirty seconds to take a seat and admire his handiwork before she returned with the news. "Wilhelm is ready when his wife is."

"Good," Tails said. "Let's just wake up Kirche's mom and get ready. Do we have a tarp or something to hide this under? I want to see Johann's face when we reveal it."

Tabitha set down her staff and promptly undid the clasp on her cloak, handing the large black square of fabric to Tails. "Thanks, Tabitha," he said, setting the black cloth on the table. He picked up the heavy launcher and gave the magazine a solid push from the right, popping it out of the left side of the launcher like a revolver. He loaded up the six shells one by one as gently as he could, to ensure that he didn't accidentally crush the detonation paper. "Not even out of the tent and I'm finding design flaws. No surprise," he said to himself with a chuckle. "Well, it only has to work once. Then they can spend all the time they like working out the bugs."

"What was that?" Lèontine asked, watching as Tails loaded the last shell and pushed the cylindrical magazine shut.

Tails shook his head. "Nothing, just me talking to myself again," he said as he wrapped the launcher in Tabitha's cloak, picking it up and cradling it under his arm. "Kirche, how's your mom doing?"

"Almost there," she replied, watching her mom slowly stir to life. "She's a heavy sleeper. I've never seen her wake up in under thirty minutes after Dad gets up, usually."

Tails and the three girls took a seat, watching and waiting patiently while Kirche shook her mom in an attempt to wake her up. Eventually, Angelika roused from her sleep, looking around the room in a total daze. "My, what a nap!" she said with a yawn. "Is it time already?"

"Yes mam, we're ready," Tails replied. "I think Wilhelm is waiting outside for us."

"Well, then let's get started!" she exclaimed. She launched herself off of her stool and began unpinning the tent door with an excited fervor, only stopping to hold the flap open wide for her guests before rushing out herself. Outside, Wilhelm stood behind Johann and a group of overall-clad workmen on the steps of a small display platform in front of his mansion, waiting patiently for the other contestants.

"Well, it's about time! Johann's been out here for half an hour waiting for you all!" he said with a grin, holding his arms wide to welcome Tails and the others. "The evening sun's just right for the occasion, so let's get started!"


	101. Season 4 Chapter 18

"Well then, Johann, let's have you go first. A big opening!" Wilhelm declared, gesturing to the young boy.

"My pleasure, sir," Johann replied, holding forth his cloth-wrapped device. The package he held was long and slender, but with some unusual contours toward the rear of the weapon. He slowly began to unravel the fine cloth surrounding his weapon, revealing a long rifle with a large metal cylinder built into the butt of the stock. "An air rifle, by the looks of it," he thought, noting a disc-shaped mechanism with five spokes near the breech of the weapon with several star-shaped spoke assemblies hanging from mounts on the muzzle end of the stock. "Must be five-round rotary magazines. Surely he could have done some other loading mechanism for greater capacity, like pump action?" Tails critiqued in his head.

"Fantastic!" Wilhelm said, gently taking the rifle from Johann. "So how does it operate? Shall we test it?"

Johann pointed to the tank at the rear. "Unlike our current rifles, this one uses compressed air to fire several magazines without the need for powder. It can, however, still use powder by adding a flint tip to the hammer. All of the magazines are loaded, included the current one. All you need to do is pull back the hammer, fire, rotate the magazine and repeat."

"Simple. Economical. No additional training required. I love it!" Wilhelm exclaimed, shouldering the rifle to aim at some invisible, distant target. "The excess weight isn't a problem with aiming, since it's all at the shoulder, too. Very well done, Johann!"

"The servants have set up a target down range," Johann said, gesturing to a man-sized target that had been set up in the field while no one was watching. Wilhelm promptly took aim at the target and, after a moment of adjusting his aim, pulled back the hammer and let a single shot loose. The compressed air rushed down the length of the barrel with a massive WHOOSH, followed by the signature whizz of the bullet as it left the barrel. The target in the distance shuddered under the impact as splinters flew, leaving a fist-sized hole in the target's upper right shoulder area.

"Great accuracy! And an easy follow up shot, what with no smoke!" Wilhelm commented, handing the rifle back to Johann. "A fantastic invention, Johann. I expect it to go into full production after further testing. And now, for the big finish. Miles!"

"Sir, I'd ask if I could handle this one for the demonstration," Tails said, climbing up the stairs to where Johann and Wilhelm stood with the bundled-up launcher under his arm. With both men's attention, he slowly undid the cloth wrapping, revealing the launcher in all of its shining glory.

"My… GOD! It's beautiful! Is this gold inlay? And silver framework? How heavy is it? May I hold it?" Wilhelm spurted, his eyes glowing with joy. Tails handed him the launcher, folding Tabitha's cloak and running it back down the steps to her before returning.

"Well, it's not light, but for its size, the weight is phenomenal! Surely you must have used some magic spells to reduce its weight some," he said, holding the launcher in one hand by the pistol grip with the stock cradled under his shoulder. "So, what does it fire? It's absolutely massive!"

Tails promptly took the launcher back from the man and pushed out the revolving magazine to reveal the bottoms of the six shells. "It fires a forty-millimeter dart that can be loaded with different projectile types. For example," he said, plucking one shell out of the magazine and holding it up for Wilhelm to see, "This shell is a high-explosive incendiary fragmenting shell. It can wipe out lots of guys with a single shot, like a cannonball. I've also made a flechette shell that acts like a large blunderbuss or shotgun, and a white phosphorous round that's good for battlefield illumination, or starting fires if you hit something that can burn."

"May we see a live demonstration? The concept is phenomenal, but how does it perform?" Wilhelm asked.

Without flinching, Tails set the shell back into its slot in the magazine and slapped it shut, leveling the hefty weapon at the distant target. He pulled the trigger slowly and steadily, waiting for the bolt to slam forward. With a soft click of the releasing bolt, the blast of the propellant filled the air and sent the dart on its way. The dart flew nearly level, crashing into the target milliseconds later and engulfing it in a ball of fire as the explosive-napalm mix ignited. Flaming gel-coated shrapnel scattered across the field, starting small fires in the grass that sent servants scrambling across the field to put them out.

"I'd guess the effective lethal range to be a couple of meters for a guaranteed kill from the shrapnel and blast wave, but the shrapnel could kill as far as it can fly, I suppose," Tails said as he turned to face Wilhelm. The man simply stood in awe, his mouth open as he stuttered to find words to reply with. "Uh, sir? Stay with me here, we've still got two other rounds to try. I'll need more targets, please."

"Uhh… Right, yes, of course! Men, more targets!" Wilhelm stuttered, his voice trembling with excitement. While the servants scrambled to bring out more targets, Tails sneaked a peek at Johann, noting that he stood completely unfazed. "Tough cookie. Good to know he's not going to be a wimp about it," Tails thought. He waited for several more targets to be brought out and the servants to clear the field before shouldering the launcher once more, taking aim at the center of a cluster of targets. Another high-explosive round later and the targets were reduced to a small blazing pile of shredded wood, with other, more distant targets having taking various levels of damage from shrapnel.

While the servants worked to extinguish the fires once more, Tails walked down the stairs and over to one of the few relatively untouched targets. "And now, a demonstration of the flechette shells!" he called back to the others. He positioned himself about ten meters from the target before shouldering the launcher. Before firing, he popped the magazine out and rotated it to ensure that the next round would be a flechette before slapping it shut once more, taking aim, and firing. With a loud bang, the target exploded into a cloud of splintered fragments as a hundred small steel darts slashed through the wooden target. Tails turned and smiled at the crowd, bowing slightly as if he had given a performance. "And for the final show!" He yelled back, shouldering the rifle once more. He opened the magazine and spun it to the white phosphorous round, slamming it shut and pointing the launcher skyward. With another trigger pull and another bang, a stream of blindingly bright phosphorous spewed out of the barrel, launching high into the sky and casting a white glow down on the ground below. The phosphorous spread out and slowly fell to the ground as it burned and aerosolized itself, leaving only minute traces of the element that reached the ground while ignited. With the show completed, Tails returned to the podium with his launcher slung over his shoulder, grinning from ear to ear.

"Miles, I must say… I'm speechless. Your work is inspiring!" Wilhelm said, returning Tails' smile with one of his own. "This weapon is remarkable in every aspect, from its construction to function, even aesthetics! It's a true masterpiece. I would be honored to take your weapon into service with my forces."

"Does that mean he won?" Kirche asked.

Wilhelm nodded. "Far and away. Just like your aircraft, your work today was a spectacle unlike anything I've ever seen! It is my pleasure to give you those gems you seek and declare you the winner. Allow me to fetch your prize." The man hopped down from the back side of the platform and walked into his mansion, yelling orders that Tails could hear all the way outside. Within minutes, Wilhelm returned with the box under his arm and a maid by his side, waiting patiently for further orders. He came around to the front of the platform and held the box out for Tails to take, still smiling with glee.

"Thank you for everything, sir," Tails said, exchanging the launcher for the box very carefully. "Be careful now, it still has one flechette and one HE round loaded, and there isn't any proper safety on it yet."

Without warning, Johann popped the current magazine out of his rifle and replaced it with one from the front of his gun, adding a flint tip to the hammer. He took aim at one of the distant targets, taking a moment to acquire his target. "Johann, what are you doing?" Wilhelm asked, but he got no response.

Tails felt a sudden sinking feeling in his stomach as Johann began pulling the trigger. The rifle went off with a loud BANG, followed by four successive shots nearly simultaneously. He could see Johann and Wilhelm fall in front of him as the circular magazine blew to pieces, sending metal shards in every direction. Adrenaline surged as Tails rushed to Wilhelm's side, inspecting the damage. One of the rounds had caught Wilhelm just to the left of his sternum, entering and exiting cleanly. Johann, on the other hand, was shredded with shrapnel but no direct bullet hits. Kirche and the others rushed up the stairs as fast as they could, with the herd of servants immediately behind them.

"DAD!" Kirche cried, dropping to her knees next to her father. "Tabitha, get over here! He needs help!"

"We need to get him to the infirmary!" one of the servants yelled.

"No, everyone shut up!" Tails called, silencing the group. He scrambled to set the box he held on the ground and undo the clasp, revealing the two Chaos Emeralds. He grabbed the yellow Emerald and held it over Wilhelm, clutching it tightly in both hands. "Chaos… Control!" he yelled.

Around Wilhelm's torso, a green bubble of light formed. Time began to slowly rewind within the enclosed area as visible bone fragments returned to their place and the flesh began to close shut, followed by the holes in his clothes sealing. As soon as the process was complete, Tails shut down Chaos Control and slid over to where Johann lay, his chest no longer rising and falling.

"Shit, let's hope this works," Tails muttered as he held the yellow Emerald over the fallen boy's chest. With the magic words, the green bubble began to form around Johann's chest. Metal slivers began to rise out of his chest, hovering at the edge of the bubble as the flesh below them mended. With the process complete and the bubble gone, the shards of metal tinkled to the ground, but the body still remained motionless. "No… FuckDAMNIT!" he yelled in exasperation. He brought up his T-Buster and leveled the cannon at the boy's chest, firing the lowest-charge pulse capable. The charge sunk into the boy's chest, causing his muscles to spasm but still no movement. Tails immediately placed his ear to the boy's chest, hoping for a heartbeat. When nothing came back, he gave Johann another pulse, followed by pressing his ear to the boy's chest once more.

After a few seconds, he could hear a beat.

Tails sat back on his tails, letting out a sigh of relief. Around him, the servants swarmed to Johann's side, letting out cheers when they confirmed things for themselves. Behind him, Tails heard Kirche crying over her father, muttering things that he couldn't hear in her father's ears. He got up and walked down the stairs of the platform, taking in the evening sun as his mind scrambled, trying to find a moment of peace.

* * *

 

"Well, that was a turn of events," Wilhelm said, cutting a massive piece of steak and skewering it with his fork. "A chain-fire, huh? Who would've thought about it?"

"Clearly not me," Johann said meekly as he sat glumly over his own plate, pushing food around with his fork. "Got us killed."

"Johann, don't punish yourself so hard," Wilhelm offered. "It was a great idea, it just wasn't thoroughly tested for safety yet. You can make it work, I'm sure."

"Or, you can hand it off to Wonder Boy over here," Johann retorted, pointing his fork at Tails. "I'm sure he'll build you some new superweapon if you ask nicely enough, or bribe him with more gems."

"Nah," Tails replied, shaking his head. "I'm not sticking around. You can go back to being king of the hill. I've gotta go find the rest of those gems to get home, so you can have all the military contracts you like."

Kirche nodded. "Tabitha and I need to get back to our studies at school, anyhow. If something new doesn't crop up, that is."

"Which I doubt," Lèontine added. "You'd be hard-pressed to get a few normal days around these guys."

Tails shrugged and took a bite of his salad. "Hey, it's how life is. Me and my friends on Mobius, we're all just trouble magnets. Anyways, we should probably be heading off after this. We can make it to the Academy before morning, and you guys can sleep in the plane."

"See what I mean?" Lèontine said, gesturing to Tails. "Can't even get a good night's sleep."

"You wouldn't have a good night's sleep either way," he continued. "You guys slept too much this afternoon." At his remark, Tails could see Johann noticeably tense up, but he chose to ignore it. "Those gasses from the furnace knocked you guys right out."

"Mhmm," Wilhelm muttered through a mouthful of food. "Must be a clogged exhaust pipe. I'll see to it at once."

"Yeah. There was a small hole in the tent, which pushed the gasses in a circle around the edge of the tent. Knocked them all right out, but didn't get me so bad for some reason."

"A hole, you say? Most interesting…" Wilhelm muttered, obviously agitated but trying to remain polite. "I'll have that mended as well."

The group finished their dinners over idle chatter about school and future plans, followed by prompt goodbyes. Tails and the four girls made their way back out to the Tornado that now stood alone in the courtyard, the tents and targets removed. Kirche gave her father a brief hug goodbye before joining the others in the Tornado. As Tails booted up the turbines of the Tornado, however, he could see Johann running up to the craft. Tails popped the canopy and hopped down to greet him once more.

"Miles!" Johann yelled, struggling to be heard over the turbines of the Tornado. "I wanted to say sorry for what I did with the sleeping spell, and for being a jerk, and… Thanks for helping me!"

Tails nodded. "It's okay! I think you would have done the same. You've got good ideas. Keep it up! The future of science needs people like us!" he yelled back, giving the boy a thumbs-up and a smile. "I'll probably visit again before I head back, so, see you soon!". With a quick spin-up of his tails, he flew up to the pilot's seat and dropped inside, shutting the canopy over him. He grabbed his headset and pulled it over his ear, running his finger over the volume wheel to ensure it was turned on and functioning properly. "Everyone ready?" he asked.

"Yeah, let's go," Lèontine replied. "If we can't sleep here, we might as well hurry up and get home."

"Actually, I was thinking we could drop by Saito's place and visit. It's half mine, anyway, so I should probably take at least ONE look at the place."

"Sounds good to me. I'm shutting off my headset, so wake me up when we're there."

"Will do. 'Night."


	102. Season 4 Chapter 19

The X Tornado set down with a dull *clunk* on the uneven flagstones of the main pathway to the manor that stood before it in the bright moonlight. Covering his mic, Tails let out a long yawn and took a moment to rub his eyes, sore from the shining cockpit instruments and screens that had been glowing at him for several hours. "That took way longer than it had to," he thought to himself. "All those stops for directions really dragged this out. Probably not going to get more than a few hours of sleep before the sun comes up."

In one of the downstairs windows of the manor, a small light flicked on. Tails watched patiently as the light disappeared and reappeared in several windows, working its way through the building toward him. Finally, the front door poked open, revealing Saito holding a fresh candle. The boy waved at the Tornado, recognizing Tails' signature craft.

Tails popped the canopy and waved back. He quickly peeled off his headset and mounted it back in its charging port before hopping down to greet Saito, meeting him in the middle between the aircraft and the front door.

"How have you been? Had fun abroad?" Saito asked cheerily, keeping his voice down. "Did you find any more of those gems you needed?"

"Yeah, three of them. Only two to go!" Tails replied, shaking Saito's hand. "One in Albion, two in Germania. I didn't get to sweep all of Germania's countryside, but Kirche's parents told me they'd keep an eye out if they found more."

Saito nodded. "Great! Anyway, Siesta decided to join me and Louise out here, so she made up all of the spare rooms. Let's get everyone unloaded and I'll show you your rooms. I found something pretty sweet you might like, too!"

Tails hopped back up into the Tornado and went down the line, rousing each person and helping them down from their seat. Once everyone was down on the ground, Saito led the group into the manor, pausing in the large reception room to point out some things. "The bathroom's over there, and most of your rooms will be down that hall. Be careful not to wake Siesta, she took one of the rooms down that way," he instructed. "Tails, come see this!" he said, gesturing for the fox to follow him. The four girls split off to go find their rooms while Tails followed Saito along a ground-floor hallway, toward the west wing of the manor. Eventually, the two stopped in front of a set of heavy double doors, more crude in design than the rest of the doors in the hallway.

"You're gonna love this!" Saito said excitedly. He pulled open one of the doors and held his candle up to ignite more candles mounted on the wall near the door. In the dim glow of the little flames, Tails could see several wooden workbenches on the far wall lined with metal pieces and parts to some unknown machine. As Saito proceeded around the room to light more candles, he could see more and more things lining the room's walls; bookshelves loaded with dusty volumes, window-ornamented cabinets loaded with various jars of chemicals, and several canvas-covered objects on the right, and a wide array of tools mounted by hooks to the wall on his left. Another set of wide double doors made up part of the left wall as well. Tails simply grinned and shook his head.

"I figured this would be right up your alley. I didn't explore the room much, in case I accidentally torched the place, but I know you like this stuff," Saito said as he lit the last candle. "Looks pretty advanced to me, but I have no clue about what I'm looking at, so I'm probably wrong."

"Yeah, looks like a pretty well-equipped workshop to me," Tails replied. He walked over to the workbenches at the back to take a brief look at the previous owner's works. "Hang on, something isn't right. This is way too advanced for anyone here…"

"What do you mean?"

"Look," Tails said, picking up a large boxy piece of metal with several small dials on it and tossing it to Saito. "Tell me what you think that is."

Saito looked over the box for a moment, studying the markings for a moment. "I dunno, some sort of radio?"

"Nailed it. It's a long-range communications radio, probably from Earth. Old-fashioned analog tech. Draws a fair bit of power, so it was probably mounted to something…" The fox walked over to the tarp-covered objects and began uncovering them one by one. The first tarp revealed several crates with odd markings on them, along with a fair bit of black print. Another tarp covered more crates and several metal tins with similar markings. Headed for the bigger objects, the third tarp finally revealed what he was looking for.

"Bingo!" Tails exclaimed, yanking the tarp free. In front of him stood a gleaming vehicle, still coated with a fresh layer of desert camouflage paint. "It's some weird combination of a tank and a motorcycle! Look at these interleaved track wheels! Great design. If those metal tins are what I think they are, this was some sort of military scouting unit, and this is their ride. The tins are ammunition, and the radio came from this vehicle, I'd guarantee."

Curious, Saito set the radio down and walked over to the vehicle and placed his hand on it. After a moment of silence, he withdrew his hand and shook his head. "It's not weaponized, so I have no clue how it works or what it is. Wait a sec… Those markings on the box. Those are World War Two markings of the Nazi army, I think! I remember seeing decals of these at the model shop where I used to buy my model planes!" he said, pointing toward the uncovered crates.

"Well, then let's take a look!" Tails replied. He walked over to the wall of smithing tools and picked out a suitably large pair of blacksmithing tongs. With a bit of effort, he was able to wedge one end of the tongs underneath the wooden lid, slowly prying it off. The lid popped off with force, skittering across the floor as Tails quickly regained his balance. Within the box lay four tubular devices, each with a bulbous head on the end and the words “ _Achtung! Feurstrahl_ ” written along their length. Saito reached down and picked one up, his eyes lighting up with surprise in sync with his Gandalfr runes.

"So, what's the verdict?" Tails asked. "Looks like some sort of grenade launching device."

"Oh yeah, this is Nazi stuff alright.  _Panzerfaust_  sixty-millimeter anti-tank recoilless rifle. Disposable, single shot. Don't ask me what half of that means, it just popped into my head when I picked it up. Do you know?"

Tails nodded. "Yeah. A recoilless rifle is a warhead-launching weapon sorta like a rocket launcher, but it uses high-velocity gas or a counter mass launched out the rear of the weapon to mitigate or eliminate the recoil. Some of Eggman's weapons used the principle for his robot minions' gear."

Saito shot Tails a glance in confusion as he bent over to put the weapon back in its crate. "So you think the previous owner of this place was a Nazi? Why else would all of this stuff be here, and not turned in to the stash at the Academy?"

"Beats me. Why did we find that stuff in Al Hambra? Why did Julio have that handgun he gave you in Romalia? Or a whole dang battalion of Black Arms? It's all part of the same issue, I'd bet."

"Fair enough. Hey, I'm gonna go back to bed before Louise gets mad. I've got some more stuff to show you in the morning, after breakfast," Saito said as he picked up his candle again and made his way to the door. "Goodnight."

"Yeah, I'm headed to bed too. 'Night," Tails replied. He followed Saito out of the workshop and headed up the stairs, making his way down the dark hallway toward his room. He fumbled along the dark hallway, pressing his ear against the doors he came across to determine whether they were occupied. After three occupied rooms and repeatedly nearly tripping on door frames and small furniture in his way, he decided to draw his T-Buster and build up a low charge. "It's not gonna bother anyone, I'm sure," he thought to himself.

In the pale yellow glow, he could make out the long hallway lined with doors, every one of them closed. "One of them's got to be my room," he thought. He walked down the hallway, testing the door handles to see if they were locked. Of the few rooms that were unlocked, none of them were a bedroom he could use.

"Storerooms and offices. Wonderful. Mine must be locked, then," he thought. "Maybe Siesta has the key I could borrow. Or maybe there's a sofa down in the foyer I could use or something." He walked back to the stairwell and tried the closest door, gently opening it and peeking his head in. Other than the low hum and occasional crackle of his T-Buster, the room was completely silent. He slowly crept over to the bed to get a better look at the person laying in it, only to slowly back away upon recognizing Lèontine's long brown hair. Just as he began to shut the door, he heard her rustling around in bed and paused to keep silent.

"Tails, that you?" He could hear her mumble. He poked his head back inside the room, holding his T-buster under his face to reveal himself. Even from the door, he could see Lèontine's golden eyes shining brightly with the light from the T-buster, creeping him out.

"Yeah, it's me. Sorry to wake you up," he said.

"Is something wrong?"

Tails shook his head. "Nah, just need to find my room. I think it's locked, so I need to go find Siesta to get a key. All of the unlocked doors were offices and stuff."

"I think she locked herself in two doors down," Lèontine said with a yawn. "You're welcome to stay here if you want."

"Thanks, I'll take you up on that if I can't find her," he replied. With that, he shut the door and walked back down the hall, stopping in front of the room Lèontine had instructed him to. Just as she had said, the door was locked. He pressed his ear to the door, but couldn't hear anything other than his T-Buster peacefully humming away. "Quiet sleeper, I suppose," he thought. He walked back down the hall to Lèontine's room and stepped inside, kicking off his shoes. Lèontine was standing at the far end of the room, wrapped in a blanket and laying down more blankets and pillows on the ground.

"What are you doing?" Tails asked, walking over to pick up the pillows and blankets she had laid out with his spare hand.

"I figured you could have the bed, since you don't like sharing them with me," she replied, extending a hand to take the pillows from him.

Tails shook his head. "That's not it at all. I'm fine with sharing beds, been doing it since I was little back in Knothole on occasion. It's just when you start acting weird that creeps me out, like on the Ostland." He tossed the pillows back on the bed and hastily laid out the top quilt once more, stowing his T-Buster so he could tuck in the ends of the quilt underneath the mattress. "So, do me a favor and don't sleep on the floor. I'm sure it's not good for your back, anyway."

Finally convinced, Lèontine returned to her side of the bed, pausing to tuck her hair underneath her before laying back. Tails hopped up onto the bed and crawled under the sheets, staring patiently off into the darkness as he worked his gloves off and set them on the floor next to his side of the bed.

"Hey Tails… Do you not like me?" Lèontine asked.

"Where did you get that idea?" Tails replied incredulously.

"Just answer the question, idiot."

"I figured that would've been a fine answer. Of course I do."

"But you like Tabitha more, right?"

Tails thought long and hard about her question, but wasn't able to come up with the answer he knew she was looking for. "If you're asking me to pick favorites, well, I'm not going to. She's gone through a lot of crap lately, you know that. She likes me, there's no question about it. I'm just not sure how far I'm willing to go, if it comes down to leaving her behind when I go home. She seems so intent on coming with me, which is great and all… But I just don't think it can work if she has to take the throne. She knows that, too."

"Ah… Hey, Tails?"

"Yeah?"

"Wanna go for a flight tomorrow?"

"If I'm not totally dead on my feet, then sure, I'd love to."

"We don't have to go early in the morning if you want to sleep in. Anyways, see you in the morning."

"Night."


	103. Season 4 Chapter 20

After a few hours of restful sleep, the heat under the covers became unbearable for Tails, rousing him from a pleasant dream. He felt as if he were being crushed by something that smelled musty and earthy. "What the heck… I can't move!" He thought. Opening his eyes, he caught a face full of feathers that smothered him. "Damnit, Lèo! Get off of me! Change back!" He whispered, half-choked and struggling to breathe.

After several moments of frantically trying to squirm out from underneath the hulking creature, he finally managed to get an arm free to beat on Lèontine's side. Her black-feathered wings rustled a bit as she slowly roused from her slumber with Tails pounding on her massive chest.

"Wha… Tails, stop, I'm up!" She rumbled. She stretched out her front paws and pulled herself out of bed, dragging Tails and the bedsheets with her as she went. The fox slammed to the floor, hardly able to move with all of his limbs thoroughly numb and asleep. "Finally, sensation!" he sighed, laying on the floor until the buzzing sensation began to fade. Lèontine extended a paw to help him to his feet.

"Thanks," he said, picking up his gloves and putting them on before accepting her help. "Why did you change back last night?"

Lèontine tilted her massive eagle-like head a few degrees. "I dunno. Sometimes it just happens, sorta like sleepwalking I guess."

"Well, you're gonna have to change back to get out the door, that's for sure."

"Yeah, give me a second." Tails shut his eyes as a bright flash of light filled the room, followed by Lèontine's soft footsteps across the wooden floor. "Let me know when you're dressed," he said.

"Almost done. I need to run out to your machine and grab another set of clothes though. Got a bunch of ash and dirt on this shirt from that furnace we used. I'm sure it's all over the skirt too, even if I can't see it. Wouldn't mind taking a bath, too."

"Yeah, I'll go open it up after breakfast. I'm starving."

"Done. You can open your eyes now. Why is it that you close your eyes, anyway? Am I that ugly?" she teased.

"what, you're not embarrassed?" Tails replied, opening his eyes and making his way over to the door. "It's not that you're ugly, it's just-"

"You don't like humans THAT way, but it's embarrassing all the same. I get it, it's fine,” she said, giving him a sly smile. “It's just a little cute when you're flustered, that's all,” she added.

"Not what I was going to say…" he muttered. He stopped to put on his shoes before opening the door and stepping out into the hallway. All of the candles were already lit and ready, revealing the details of the finely decorated hallway he had missed the night before. "Dang, this place is nicer than I thought!"

"Morning, Mister Miles!" he heard a familiar voice call. He turned to see Siesta standing in the hallway, a feather duster in one hand and a bucket in the other with a rag draped over the rim. "Sleep well? I hope you enjoy your new home as much as Saito has," she said. In the background, Tails could hear muffled yelling that sounded like Saito and Louise, at each other's necks in another heated argument.

"Siesta, what're you doing here?" Tails asked. "Did you do all of this?" he added, gesturing to the candles along the hallway.

"Yep! I was appointed by the Queen as Saito's personal maid," she said with a smile. "Most knights have one or two, so I thought it would be nice if I could work for him instead of the Academy."

"Hey, that's great! I'm sure it's a lot more fun than scrubbing dishes for Marteau, right?"

"Yes! Getting to be around Saito more often is wonderful, even if Miss Vallière is a pain sometimes. I think we'll get along eventually, though," she said, returning to her work dusting off the hallway tables.

"Awesome. Anyways, have you already eaten breakfast? Is there anything left?" Tails asked.

Siesta nodded. "It's downstairs in the dining hall, waiting for you. Fruit from the local farmers and some muffins I made. Saito's still downstairs, since he woke up late as well."

Tails nodded and walked over to the stairs with Lèontine close behind. In the foyer below, he could see Saito and Louise having another argument, trading verbal blows back and forth over some unknown topic. "Hey, what's going on?" he asked.

"I need to show you something, but Louise is objecting per usual," he said. "Come with me, you really need to see this."

"Then I'm coming with you!" Louise cried furiously. "I'm not going to let you be the perverted little dog you always are this time!"

"Fine! If it makes you happy, you can even board it up again after Tails is done with it," Saito replied. "I just thought it would be helpful if Tails could make heads or tails of it, if it could help us get home or not. No pun intended, Tails," he added, grinning at the yellow fox.

"Yeah yeah, I get it all the time," Tails replied, smirking at the stupid joke. "Anyways, just show me what you've got. We haven't eaten yet."

"Right, this way," Saito said. He led the three back through one of the ground level hallways to what appeared to be a library. "I was exploring around in here, when I found this," he said, walking over to one of the bookshelves. He pulled one of the books out of the shelf and reached into the hole where the book once was, followed by a loud click. The bookshelf promptly slid inward, then sideways to reveal a stone stairway illuminated by candles.

"Uhh, I'll stay here," Lèontine said nervously, looking down into the stairway from where she stood.

"Suit yourself!" Tails replied as he took off down the stairs, taking the steps two at a time in a race to the bottom. The noise of his footsteps evolved into a dull roar as the sound echoed down the stone-walled stairwell, continuing for quite some time. "Dang, how deep is this place? It's like a little bunker or something," he called back.

"Not quite. You'll see!" Saito replied, his voice echoing down the stairwell. Tails stopped and waited for Saito and Louise before continuing. When the trio finally reached the bottom of the stairs, a heavy wooden door with steel reinforcing straps awaited them. Saito withdrew a small key from the pocket of his sweater and inserted it into the lock of the door, twisting hard to open the heavy mechanism with a loud *shlick* of greased metal on metal. With the lock undone, he withdrew the key and pulled the door open.

Inside, Tails could see what appeared to be an extremely plush bedroom lit with more candles, their flickering, likely magical light filling the room. A large velvet-covered king-sized bed with a decorative overhead drapery sat off to one side, with a gold-inlaid table and equally-adorned chairs to match on the other. Dressers and shelves loaded with books and fancy boxes dotted the room, but the central piece that attracted Tails was a large mirror directly across the room from the door that was partially blocked off by heavy wooden planks nailed to the frame.

"Yep, that's it," Saito said with a nod. "Help me get the planks off."

Saito walked over to the mirror with Tails and took hold of one of the planks by the end, with the fox on the other. With a countdown and a heave, they yanked the boards off of the frame of the mirror one by one, nails and all, and set them in a pile next to the mirror. When the mirror was finally clear, Tails stepped back and watched closely as Saito approached the mirror and set a hand on the glassy surface. The mirror's surface suddenly blurred up and took on a watery textures waves rippled across the surface, only to clear up moments later with a new image, one that didn't show Tails, Saito, or the room they were in. In front of them stood Queen Henrietta in a less-formal white dress, her hand also extended and touching Saito's.

"What the – holy sh… Dang!" Tails exclaimed as Henrietta stepped through the mirror, smiling at Saito all the while. He darted over to the mirror and briefly stuck his hand through, waving it around to see if it would feel any different. When nothing happened, he reached his hand around the mirror and felt the wall on the side Henrietta had come from, feeling the wooden frame that mirrored the one on his side.

"Yeah, it's real," Saito said, nodding to Tails. "Two magic mirrors that act as teleportation portals."

"Do you know what this means?!" Tails yelled, eyes wide as he stuck his head through to take a look on the other side. He looked around in what appeared to be a dressing room, with walls lined with the Queen's array of outfits. "I think this is our ticket home!"

"Really?" Henrietta asked, turning to Tails.

"Yeah! Using gravity wave sensors, we can pick up exactly where these two portals link. It's sorta like when a super large star collapses into a black hole, but instead of having mass collapse inward infinitely fast, mass is moving from one point to another infinitely fast. You probably don't understand, but Saito might."

Saito shook his head. "Nope, completely lost."

Tails sighed and withdrew himself from the mirror. "When stars collapse into black holes, all of their mass becomes focused at an infinitely small point. Because you can't reach infinity though, that mass has to be moving, in theory at the speed of light. But, with the distance between here and the castle, even the speed of light would have a little lag. In other words, it would feel as if we were being temporarily pulled back through the mirror as our mass catches up from traveling from one point to another. However, going through the portal, I felt just fine!"

"So… You were moving faster than the speed of light?"

"Yes, exactly!" Tails cried, shaking with excitement. "Actually… Not exactly. This magic, whatever it is, is bending the space-time grid between here and there," he said, pointing at the floor inside Queen Henrietta's closet, "… And making them connected so that we essentially 'jump' the distance between the two places, a la 'teleportation'. It's called quantum tunneling, something that usually happens naturally on particle-sized scales, like, individual electron sizes. Picture taking a piece of paper with an ant on it. The paper is the grid. Normally, the ant has to travel the full length of the paper to get from one end to the other, but what if you fold the paper? He can walk from one place to the other in just a few steps."

Saito shook his head. "That's crazy. I sorta get the analogy, but I don't see how it helps us get home."

"Well, all dimensions and universes are connected by an in-between area, which Sonic found during some of his zone-hopping adventures. Gravity waves, which will happen when your mass is displaced from one place to the next instantly like the shockwave of an explosion, don't travel through that in-between area from one universe to the next, sorta like sound in a vacuum or in space which keeps universes isolated. BUT!” Tails said with a grin, raising a finger in objection to his own statement, “…If we can find a way to make the portal once, which creates a path through the in-between zone for mass to travel, such as the solar eclipse, then we can use gravity waves to trace the path through the in-between area and recreate it artificially. Basically, if we catch something being pulled from your universe in the act, we can trace it, recreate the path it took with a portal gate, and get you back to your world. Or, if we get to the next solar eclipse before that happens, we can trace the path of the solar eclipse when you go through and recreate the portal whenever we want."

"That's great!" Henrietta said, briefly hugging Saito. "I'm so glad you'll be able to return home after all! I returned your flying machine to the Academy, but I saw that it was in a horrible state and was afraid that you wouldn't be able to get back."

In the background, Louise let out a fake cough to catch the Queen's attention, causing her to let go of Saito in embarrassment. "Yeah, well, he's still with me until I say so. He's my familiar, after all," she said in an accusative tone.

"Well, I'd best be returning," Henrietta replied, looking down at the stone floor and blushing. "I have some work to attend to, I'm sure. Do be sure to drop by sometime for a chat."

Tails watched patiently as Queen Henrietta walked back through the mirror, seamlessly moving from the underground room to her closet. Moments after Henrietta exited the mirror on her side, the mirror reverted to its original state without so much as a millisecond's notice.

"So, what next?" Saito asked.

Tails shrugged. "Well, we still need to get the last two Chaos Emeralds to even be able to take advantage of anything we gain from trying to work with gravity waves. It'll take a tremendous amount of energy to get us from one universe to the other, which means we'd need no less than all seven to start it, plus some energy storage on hand to maintain the connection long enough for us to get through. That's a lot of work, as an understatement."

"Fine, well, if you're done with the mirror, put the boards back on," Louise commanded. "As soon as we leave, I want that key melted down and thrown away." Saito began to object, but she promptly cut him off. "No buts. You promised you would never come back down here ever again. If you're going back on your promise, you're doing it on my terms."

"Come on, Louise! I won't leave you," he said, gesturing to Tails. "I was only thinking he would need to keep access to it for his work."

Louise thought for a moment before reluctantly agreeing. "Fine, but if I catch you down here without him, then you're in some deep shit!”

Saito walked over to the door and shoved it open, holding it for Tails and Louise as they exited. The door slammed shut with a loud *clack* as the one-way lock engaged, sealing the room behind them. At the top of the stairs, Lèontine was sitting patiently on a small sofa, browsing one of the books from the library underneath a small reading candle. "So, what did you guys find?" she asked.

"Aw, man! You should've seen it!" Tails began, still grinning from ear to ear. "There was a magic mirror that could do quantum tunneling on a massive scale! It was sooooo cool! You would've loved it. Sure you don't want to run back down there and take a look?"

"Nah, I'm fine. Hungry, but fine," she replied, closing the book and replacing it in an open space on a nearby bookshelf.

"The leftovers of breakfast are on the table in the kitchen," Saito instructed. "Tabitha and Kirche are already up and about, so I'm sure they shouldn't be too hard to find."

The four walked back to the foyer and split up, with Tails and Lèontine headed to the dining room. Inside the long, well-lit room, a polished oak table sat with a couple of serving platters of food on one end. Tabitha also sat at the end of the table, silently reading a large letter of some sort. The two walked down the length of the table and took a seat, filling their plates with muffins, scones, and a variety of fruit.

"Whatcha got there, Tabitha?" Tails asked, biting into a cranberry muffin. Tabitha promptly folded up the letter and inserted it back into its envelope, placing the envelope in her brown bag she had brought in from the Tornado the night before and returning to her half-eaten breakfast in silence. It took several moments of patient waiting before Tails knew she wasn't going to talk about it. "Is something wrong?"

Tabitha shook her head. "I'll be returning home to arrange the coronation today."

"Hey, that's great! I'm glad to hear it," he replied reassuringly. "You'll do a great job, I'm sure."

Tabitha simply nodded silently and finished nibbling at her last muffin before excusing herself from the table. Tails watched as she walked along the table side, her wooden staff occasionally clacking against the polished stone floor as she went. Only after she had disappeared behind the door to the foyer did he continue to eat, slightly worried. "I know it was the right choice, but she clearly doesn't like it," he thought, munching away on a slice of an apple. "I bet the letter was a request from some nobles to summon her back home."

"Pretty much," Ring's voice rang out in his head. "By the way, you ever gonna get me outta this damn seat in your Tornado thing? I feel like I've been in here a year."

"Yeah, fine, I'll pull you out after I get back from my flight with Lèontine. Assuming she still wants to go."

Tails finished off his muffin and quickly packed down another before standing up and stretching a bit. "Ready to go whenever you are, Lèo," he said.

"Mhmm," she replied through a mouthful of grapes. She swallowed and hastily devoured an apple and a glass of water before standing up, following him to the door. "By the way, do you mind if we run into town while we're out? I'd like to go shop for clothes."

"I didn't think that was your thing, but I guess we can," he replied, giving her a curious look.

Lèontine shrugged. "It's not, but I figured I've been borrowing Kirche's clothes for too long. I need my own."

"Fair enough. Let's get going, or we won't be back before lunch. Do you have any of your own money from Albion still?"

"I do, but it might not work here in Tristain. Gold's gold, but people might not take it if it's Albian mint."

"Fine. I'll bring mine, but bring yours and we'll use it if we can. I'm not sure if I'll be getting more anytime soon." Tails walked outside to his Tornado and popped the canopy to climb up and fetch his purse, still tied to Ring's sheath stuffed up underneath his seat. Nestled underneath the wide blade, his black and blue cloak lay bundled up, as if it had been carelessly tossed there. "Huh, I thought it fell out of the Tornado back in Romalia during the fight," he thought, reaching for the ball of fabric and setting it on top of the seat. He grabbed the whole sheath and put it on, adjusting Ring so that it wouldn't bother him in flight. After a moment of thought, he reached back in and grabbed his cloak and Leontine's small purse, tying them onto the waistband of the sheath's support belt, and pressed the canopy shut.

A bright flash filled the air behind him, signifying that Lèontine was ready to go. With a press of a button on his wristcomm, the jets in his shoes sprung into life and propelled him off of the edge of the Tornado, clear into the air. He turned to see Lèontine in her griffin form, her clothes bundled up in one of her front paws. With a massive *whoosh*, she took to the air with a massive stroke of her wings and began to catch up.

"So, do you know which way to town?" Tails yelled over the noise of Lèontine's wings as she came to a hover, bobbing up and down as her massive wings pounded rhythmically to keep her aloft.

"We just follow the roads, right?" she boomed, cocking her head downward to take a look at the dirt trail below that lead away from the mansion. "We can probably stop in town for directions to the castle. All of the good shopping will be in the capitol."

"Ugh, that's probably an hour away from here, even by air!" he complained.

"Aww come on, I'm sure you could use the exercise," she chided with a hawkish laugh. "You'll get fat sitting in a workshop all day."

Tails rolled his eyes and took off through the air with his tails and jet shoes in full thrust, tracing the dirt path below him as he flew. Forest and untilled cloud fields gave way to rustic orchards and wooden cottages as the two made their way toward the small town that lay before them. "What did Queen Henrietta say this place was called again?" he asked himself.

"Ornielles. It was the name of the last guy who owned the place," Ring answered in Tails' mind. "He was a pretty decent guy as nobles go, if I remember right. Lived a pretty long time, nearly a hundred years. His place has been sitting empty for about ten or so, I think. We liked to keep an eye on people before we were assigned, me and Derflinger."

"Really? Sure didn't look like it. The place looked brand new on the inside," Tails thought back.

"Siesta knows a magic of her own, called cleaning. Try it in your workshop sometime."

Tails rolled his eyes. "Shut up, it's not that bad..."

* * *

 

Within ten minutes, Tails and Lèontine were able to land in town, get directions, and get back in the air toward Tristain's capitol. Just under an hour passed before they reached the sprawling city that surrounded the castle, coming to a stop at its outskirts. The two searched for a place for Lèontine to transform, finding a small empty shed for her to use. Tails waited outside while Lèontine changed into Kirche's clothes, taking time to untie his cloak from his sheath and clasp it to his neck.

Finally, Lèontine emerged from the shed in her human form, fully dressed once more. "Ready!" she said with a smile.

"Alright. I wouldn't mind popping by the barracks and visiting George if he's here, too," Tails replied, handing her her purse from his sheath belt. The two walked off into town, quickly merging with the daily foot traffic of the markets around them. Searching through the streets, it didn't take long for Lèontine to spot a suitable clothing store and drag Tails through the foot traffic to its door, disappearing into the street-side shop.


	104. Season 4 Chapter 21

Tails sat idly on a chair at the front of the small store, twiddling his thumbs and looking around at the several clothing styles on display. At the back of the store, an old man looking equally as bored sat behind a counter, squinting at the handful of coins he was counting in silence. Only after what felt like an eternity did Lèontine emerge from a dressing room in the back of the shop, wearing a dark green low-back sundress that accented her shapely figure with thin shoulder straps and a skirt that flowed down to her knees. He also noticed she was wearing a new pair of white calf-high tube socks and brown leather shoes. "Like it?" She asked, spinning around to show off her new clothing.

"Looks great!" Tails said with as much enthusiasm as he could muster, praying that this would end soon in his head. "Are you just getting those?"

"Well, I'll be getting a few different outfits similar to this in different colors, as well as two sets of clothing similar to Kirche's. That's all including socks and underwear, of course. That should leave me with eight outfits total, one for each day of the week plus one to wear while the laundry's being done," she replied, stepping aside to reveal the elderly shopkeeper's wife carrying all of the other outfits over her arm.

"She looks lovely! Just like I did back in my day," the lady said with a warm smile.

Tails nodded and stepped up to the counter, untying his purse from his sheath. "How much will it be, sir?"

The old man put away his coins and took the stack of clothes from his wife, evaluating each one before scrawling down something on a pad of paper with a small quill. He asked for a few details from his wife, then went back to jotting more notes. "That'll be a gold and a half, sir," the man concluded. Tails briefly fished around in his purse and extracted two gold coins, setting them on the table for the man to see. After squinting at the gold coins to ensure their authenticity, he opened a small box underneath the counter and dropped the coins in, withdrawing five silver coins before shutting the box again. "Here you are," he said, handing Tails the coins. "Have a nice day!"

Tails withdrew the clothes from the counter and headed for the door eager to leave, but stopped himself at the door. "I don't suppose you'd have some sort of bag we could use to carry this? We're traveling," he explained.

The old man scratched his head, then reached back under the counter and pulled up a large burlap sack. "I'm afraid this is all I have, if it will do. I'll need two silver back to buy me a new one, though."

"That'll do," Tails replied. He returned to the counter and withdrew two of the five silver coins he had been given, trading them for the sack and setting the new clothes inside. "Thanks for your help."

"Anytime! Do come again!" The old lady said, leaning on the counter next to her husband.

Tails bolted for the door with the sack in hand, meeting up with Lèontine on the street out in front of the shop. The two wandered off into the foot traffic, slowly meandering through the crowd toward the castle.

"Hey, wanna stop for a snack?" Lèontine suggested, pointing toward a street vendor. A savory smell permeated the air, emanating from a tall cart loaded with breads and snacks and staffed by a single man that hawked his wares to the passing crowd. "We've still got an hour or so before we get home for lunch. Those muffins don't hold up under a good workout."

Tails thought he could feel his stomach rumbling, but dismissed it. "I'm fine, but if you want something, we can stop I suppose. I'd still like to go see George, though."

"Who said we won't?" she replied. She pulled Tails over to the stand by the arm, stopping behind another fellow who seemed to be in line for the stand. When it was finally their turn to order, Lèontine picked out a large salted cheesy pretzel, adding a second for Tails. "Trust me, you'll regret it mid-flight if you don't, and I'm not waiting for you if you slow down."

"I'll be fine, trust me. You can have it if you want two," he said, forking over the cash to the vendor salesman. He took his pretzel and tried a bite, letting the greasy salted cheese flavor fill his mouth. "Hmm, not bad. A little too soft for me, but I'm used to the tiny cracker-like pretzels I guess," he thought.

Suddenly, loud cries arose from the people in the street behind Tails and Lèontine. Tails whirled around, only to see a gang of men rush past with loaded pockets and heavy stuffed bags. In the corner of his eye, he noticed that they had brushed up against Lèontine, knocking her pretzel out of her hand and into the dirty street a few feet away. "Hey, you little shits! Watch it!" she yelled after the men, reaching to pick up her pretzel in hopes of salvaging some of it.

One of the men of the group stopped and spun around on his heels, turning to face Lèontine. "What was that, you little bitch?!" he yelled back, dropping his bag with a loud *clank* and rolling up his grime-coated shirt sleeve. "Say that to me again and see what fuckin' happens!"

"You better pay for this! I can't eat that, with all that dirt on it," she replied, throwing the pretzel at the man's feet. Some of the other men from the group turned around to try to dissuade their comrade as he planted a firm heel in the cheesy bread, grinding it into the cobblestone street. "Come on, man! The guard'll be here soon!" they said.

"Fuck the guard! I'll teach this little cross-eyed bitch a lesson, first!" the first man stated, making his way over to Lèontine. Tails watched with mild indifference as a bright flash filled the air, blinding everyone nearby as the streets began to clear around the fighters. When the light faded, he could see Lèontine standing in front of him with her brown feather-coated paws ready, talons dully gleaming in the morning light. This time, however, he noticed her sprawling black wings had sprouted out of her back, arching out nearly three times her shoulder span on either side of her. "That's new," Tails quietly mused with a raised eyebrow as he took a bite of his pretzel, watching the now-terrified man slowly back away as Lèontine stepped forward, her wings brushing the tips of his ears as she passed.

"You picked the wrong lady to mess with," she said with a devilish grin, her eyes locked with the man’s as he stumbled backward toward his allies. In the blink of an eye, she darted forward and seized the man by the throat, raising him off his feet with one arm and tossing him to the ground. The man let out a moan as he rolled around on the ground, cradling his head as she stood over him. "Let me guess, stolen stuff in the bag, right?" she asked, ignoring the man's attempt at an answer as she browsed through the bag he'd dropped. She withdrew several golden articles, ranging from fine jewelry to gold-embroidered clothing to custom silverware with gold inlay. "Figures," she muttered.

The man's cohorts, now back in possession of their senses, turned to run with their bags of loot held close to their chest. Quick on the draw, however, Lèontine easily sprinted up to one and grabbed him by the back of his skull, the tips of her talons digging into his cheeks and face. Tails bit into his pretzel and held it in his teeth as he drew his T-Buster, charging a stun shot and launching it after the other fleeing man. The shot hit home in the fleeing man's lower back, dropping him to the ground as his feet gave out from under him. He put away his T-Buster and picked up the bag Lèontine had left behind with the first man as he passed by, walking up to the man he'd shot and extracting the bag he held clutched to his chest.

"What should we do with them?" Lèontine asked, turning to Tails with a casual grin. "Should we drag them to the nearest guard, or let this be a lesson?"

Tails cradled both loot bags against his chest alongside Lèontine's bag of clothes and pulled his pretzel out of his mouth "Leave him," he said, nodding down the street. In the distance, he could hear shrill whistles as a unit of guards plowed its way through the crowd, their metal halberds and pikes shining brightly above the moving mass of people. "They won't be able to leave before the crowd gets here. Not with this many people, anyway."

"Alright," she replied, casually tossing the man she held down to the street. Tails grimaced at the crack of bone snapping as the man landed on his left arm, followed by a scream of pain as the man writhed on the ground, clutching his newly broken arm with his other hand.

"Overkill, Lèo. Overkill," he muttered, shaking his head. He picked up the third large bag of loot and struggled to carry them all over to the edge of the crowd, setting the three bags of gold items down in front of a young man who had been watching the spectacle. "Make sure the guard get back to these. Try not to take too much," he instructed, pointing to the approaching guards and turning to face Lèontine. "Lèo, let's get going. The guards are almost here."

Lèontine reverted to her fully human form behind him, the flash from her light causing the crowd to shield their eyes. "Waste of a perfectly good pretzel, and not even anything to show of it," she grumbled, dusting off her dress and flicking back her long hair. "At least I didn't get any blood on the new clothes."

"You can have the rest of this one," he said, tearing off a small chunk around where he'd bitten into it and extending the rest to her. "I'm not hungry. Let's get outta here in case the guard decides to stop us."

"Thanks!" she replied, gratefully accepting the pretzel. The two began walking toward the edge of the clearing in the crowd, but didn't quite make it out before the guard unit burst onto the scene. "Wait right there!" a familiar voice cried. Tails turned around to see George running up to him in full armor, the gold decorations on the shoulderguards shining brightly. "I knew it was you, Tails! Only one guy coulda finished 'em that fast!" he said with a grin. "How ya been?"

"Pretty good!" Tails replied, taking his outstretched hand and shaking it firmly. "Don't look at me for this one. All her," he added, nodding toward Lèontine.

"I'll be damned!" George said, giving Lèontine a quick look-over. "Don't even see a weapon on her! Pretty skilled to take down three guys barehanded, ma'am."

Lèontine grinned. "You could say it runs in the family."

George suddenly leaned over to Tails' ear. "Not to probe in public, but uhh… She ain't a second girlfriend, is she? I know your first one was pretty sick last time I saw her…" he whispered.

"No! Hell, no," Tails exclaimed, looking at George incredulously. "Neither of them are my girlfriend! No, you remember that griffin I was with?"

"Yeah?"

"That's her, right there."

"…oh." George looked back to Lèontine, dumbfounded. "You lost me."

"She's a rhyme dragon," Tails replied.

"Oooohhh… Gotcha. Well, I'll be damned!" George exclaimed. "Never seen a real Rhyme Dragon. Anyways, your first lady friend?"

"She's totally fine, completely recovered. She's off arranging her coronation in Gallia."

George tapped the wooden shaft of his halberd against the ground and threw his off-hand up into the air. "Great! First Rhyme dragons, now queens. Where do the surprises end?"

"Probably the fact that I broke that guy's skull tossing him against the street, and yet he's still conscious and trying to escape," Lèontine calmly pointed out, gesturing toward the first man she had assaulted as he tried to disappear into the crowd. George gestured to his men behind him, sending them charging off after the escapee to tackle him to the ground and restrain him. Once the guards had detained the three criminals, foot traffic began to resume along the street.

"Anyway, looks like you've been keeping yourself busy!" Tails said, gesturing to George's men.

"Yup!" George replied, beaming with pride as he watched his men haul the prisoners away with the bags of loot. "Out training the new recruits. Got promoted after the incident in Romalia, so I got to take command of a couple'a guard units. I spend my time with the recruits as much as I can. Can't build a reputation without doin' the legwork, right? How's the new place you got workin' out? I wasn't there when you were assigned your title. Congrats, by the way."

"Thanks. It's working out well, although I've been there only once. Saito and Louise more or less own the place, as far as I'm concerned."

"Well, good to hear!" George said, patting Tails on the back. "Anyway, I've gotta get back to work. Might be able to get somethin' outta those poor guys your friend messed up if they aren't too broken. Good talkin'!" The armor-clad man received the loot bags from the young passerby and took off down the street after his recruits, waving goodbye over his shoulder.

"So, is that it?" Lèontine asked between bites as she finished off her second pretzel, dusting off her dress again to remove any breadcrumbs.

"Yeah, we can go now," Tails replied, gesturing back down the street the way they had come. "Unless you see something else you want while we're here."

shook her head. "Nah, I'm ready to go. Don't want to miss lunch."

"You just ate! I swear, you're almost as bad as Sonic on half-price days at the chilidog stands," he replied, shaking his head.

The two worked their way back through the busy streets, weaving through the crowds as they made their way back to the edge of town. They came up to the empty shed that Lèontine had used to change earlier, but this time she didn't go in. With another bright flash, she sprouted her wings once more and gave them a test flap, practicing her balance. "I've never tried flying like this, now that I think about it," she said, taking a moment to look over her wingspan.

"Just don't drop out of the sky on me," Tails replied as he took to the air, her canvas sack of clothes in hand. He waited patiently as she spread her wings and flapped hard, taking to the air slowly as she gained her sense of midair balance. With a few minutes of slow, low-altitude practice flight, the two were on their way.


	105. Season 4 Chapter 22

The two touched down at Saito's manor at around noon, as best as Tails could guess from the sun's position in the sky. He had been worried that it would take too long with Lèontine trying to fly in this new fashion, but to his relief, she had caught on quickly.

"Hmm, that was sorta nice," she said, folding in her wings behind her back. "I might have to try that more often."

Tails nodded and handed her the bag of clothes. "I'm just gonna drop some stuff off in the Tornado. Hopefully lunch is ready," he said, walking over to his jet where it stood, its gold-titanium alloy airframe gleaming brightly in the sunlight. He hopped up on the vehicle and popped the canopy with the manual release, untying his purse and stuffing it up underneath his seat. He turned to watch Lèontine walk into the rustic manor without him before turning his attention back to his sheath, untying his cloak from the waistband and clasping it back around his neck.

Ring popped out of his sheath a ways, freeing up his mouthpiece. "So, who ya' gonna pick?" he said aloud, his mouthpiece clanking away obnoxiously.

"I told her I'm not picking yet, so it's still the same answer," Tails replied, tapping Ring back into his sheath and undoing the sheath belt. He set the scimitar into the floorboard of his pilot's seat and pressed the canopy shut by hand, ignoring Ring's muffled verbal complaints from behind the glass as he hopped down from the craft.

"You're gonna have to pick eventually, bro," Ring said in Tails' mind as the fox walked away from the Tornado.

"Shut up. I'm going to get some lunch," he thought. He opened the large front door and stepped into the cool, cavern-like foyer of the manor and shut the door, taking a deep breath of the room's musty scent. In the dining room through an open doorway on his right, he could hear several voices that he didn't immediately recognize, piquing his interest. "Wonder who it is?" he said as he walked over to the doorway and stepped in.

Inside, the table was lined with several familiar faces. Guiche, Montmorency, and several of the key members of the Ordine Knights including Reynald, Gimli and Malicorne occupied one side of the long banquet table, with Tiffania joining Saito and the other girls on the other. Even Queen Henrietta had joined the party, seated at the end of the table as a guest of honor. No one paid Tails any mind as he took a seat next to Lèontine, pulling up his chair and loading his plate with the variety of meats and roasted vegetables that Siesta had prepared for the feast. "Hey Saito, what's the occasion?" he called down the table.

"You didn't see it on your way in? The local villagers discovered a hot spring near the orchard by the path on the way in from town. I spent the morning with them to prepare it as a local bath, so I invited everyone in to have lunch and give it a go," he explained. "Queen Henrietta helped me get the invites out using magic so people could get here on time."

"Ah," Tails replied as he carved off a bite of roasted chicken breast and took a bite. He took a moment to savor the meat, letting the dusting of herbs de province fill his mouth before swallowing. "Great job with this, Siesta!" he called over his shoulder. Siesta popped out of the adjacent kitchen upon hearing her name, blushing with pride. "Thank you!" she said with a smile and a slight bow in his direction. Guiche gave her a quick round of applause that filled the room as others joined in in appreciation, causing Siesta to blush even harder. She quickly disappeared back into the kitchen to return to her work, leaving the guests to their meal.

"So, who's up for a round of blackjack?" Lèontine asked as she devoured the last of her plate of food and began loading it with seconds. The Ordine Knights let out a collective groan, shaking their heads. "I don't have much money to lose, so I'd rather not," Reynald said, holding up his purse and shaking it to demonstrate how few coins he had. "You'd be carrying more IOU's than a barkeeper."

Tails ate quietly and listened to the conversations that crisscrossed the table, cleaning off his plate in a matter of minutes. He readjusted his cloak so that it stopped pulling the fur on the back of his neck and sat back in his chair, his eyes wandering over the room.

"Hey bro, someone's coming," Ring said in Tails' mind, a note of urgency in his voice.

"It's not just some villagers, I assume?" Tails thought, suddenly sitting up in his chair and tossing his napkin on the table.

"No, they're coming from the forest behind the place, not the path. They're carrying weapons I can jump to, for sure."

"Can you tap into their vision and tell me something about them?"

"Gimme a sec… Alright, we got at least four dudes. One ripped dude with a mace, two teens that look like twins, one with a saber and one with a knife. One pint-sized kid with a tuba. I’ll let you take a guess which one isn’t like the rest."

Tails stepped out of his chair and made his way to the door, ignoring people's questions asking where he was going as he stepped out into the foyer. Once he shut the door behind him, he broke into a sprint and slammed his way through the front door, opening the front canopy of the Tornado with his wristcomm as he ran. He clambered up the leg of the craft to the pilot's seat and withdrew Ring, tossing the empty sheath back into the seat and dropping to the ground. "How close are they?" he asked.

"A hundred meters, closing at a jogging pace. They're being pretty cautious, using cover to obscure line of sight from the windows at the back of the manor when they can."

"Good," Tails said with a nod. "That probably means they don't know how many of us there are, or where they are in the house. That should give Saito time to get the Queen to safety once they hear the noise." He sprinted around the left side of the manor, reaching the small grassy field that formed a buffer between the manor and the forest behind it. He gripped the scimitar in both hands, taking a ready pose as he waited for the attackers to show themselves.

"Well well, look who we have here," a voice called from the woods, stilted with a heavy French accent. "You must be Miles, the one who defeated that idiot king of Gallia. A pleasure to meet you at last."

"And you are?" Tails asked, scanning the treeline. His ears told him that the voice was coming slightly to the left of him, but he continued to search for the other three targets in hopes of preventing an ambush.

"The name's Bleu. Perhaps you've heard of me and my family?"

"Not really. Care to explain?"

Finally, a young blond-haired boy stepped out of the woods in front of Tails, wielding a slender, razor-sharp dueling saber in one hand. "As you say, not really," he replied with a smug grin. "A little birdie told me that we could find a few certain valuable persons here. Someone with quite a bounty on their head."

"Bro, Muscleboy on the left has a pretty big rock on your left. I'll shield you, so get ready," Ring announced in Tails' mind.

Tails nodded in acknowledgement. "Well, you'll need to define 'valuable persons'. No bounties, I'm afraid," he said aloud, watching the young boy intently for any sign of movement.

"Well," the boy said with a shrug, "I suppose we'll just have to find out for ourselves. Jack, if you would."

Tails grinned as a short grunt resounded from the woods to his left, followed by the distinctive whistling of a flying projectile that quickly grew louder as it approached. The fox's eyes never left the boy, watching as he darted forward to attack in combination with his ally in the trees. Without a moment's notice, Ring's blue shield enveloped Tails moments before the boulder impacted. The boulder exploded against the side of Tails' shielded head, practically dissolving into a cloud of dust and small stone fragments that masked the approach of the deadly saber from the opposite side. When the dust cleared, Tails stood unmoved without flinching, the saber's sharp blade millimeters from his neck stopped cold in its tracks by the pulsing blue energy shield. "You're gonna have to try a little harder than that," Tails said with a grin as he raised his scimitar, leveling it at the boy's neck and pressing slightly, drawing a thin line of blood.

"Well, we can deal with that," Bleu replied, backpedaling as his comrades emerged from the woods to assist. He withdrew a small blue orb from his pocket and held it forward, showing it to Tails. "I would imagine you've seen one of these before," he said with a grin, waving the blue orb slightly to show it off.

Tails' smug smile turned to a frown. "So you plan to blow us all sky-high? Not very smart if you wanted your so-called bounty."

"No, no, no, my furry friend!" Bleu laughed. "This isn't a fire stone. This is much, much worse. For you, anyway." With a quick squeeze, the sphere shattered into several fragments and released a blast of wind in all directions. Tails covered his eyes instinctively, slowly feeling the wind cutting through his shield and splintering it into thousands of fragments that floated into the air and blinked out of existence. "What the…" he thought, watching as the last fragment of shield floated off of his nose into the air.

"It seems that elf's craft is just as good as always. Elvish enchanted stones, you see," Bleu taunted, flourishing his saber. "Single use spells for non-wizards. Dispel is an elvish specialty, compared to the Explosion spell that that idiot king Joseph commandeered. Now then, where were we?"

"Ring, you with me?" Tails thought as he leveled his scimitar, breathing deeply to calm his racing heart. He waited for moments, keeping his eyes on the four enemies in front of him without a response from Ring. "Shit, Ring, talk to me!" he thought.

"What're we waiting for?" the white-haired muscle-laden man said, raising his massive mace into the air and resting it on his shoulder.

"To be honest, I'm not quite sure. But, Jack, if you want to start, by all means!" Bleu said, gesturing to the fox with the tip of his saber. The bulky man darted forward with uncanny speed, bringing the massive head of his mace slamming down on the ground where Tails stood moments ago. Tails used his tails to support him as he ducked under a wild swing of the mace as the man brought it flying around, taking the opportunity to land a solid blow to the back of the man's head with the wide, flat section of the scimitar's tip like a club. The man stumbled from the blow, using his weapon as a crutch to stop his fall and get him back into the action as his comrades closed in.

As Bleu closed in with his saber flashing, Tails found himself stepping back under the flurry of blows, blocking the blows he could and moving to dodge the ones he couldn't. "That all you've got?" Bleu grunted between blows, refusing to let up. "How you gained that knight's cloak is beyond me."

"I'd show you, if it were worth the time," Tails retorted. "Then again, even Antoine would put you to shame if this's all you’ve got!"

"You'll regret that!" Bleu said, redoubling his efforts. Tails leaped backwards as Bleu's female cohort tried to cut in with a knife from the side, turning to sprint as fast as he could back to the front of the manor. Saito and several of the others were standing outside, calling his name and looking for him in the trees when he came tearing around the corner, scrambling up the Tornado and vaulting up into the pilot's seat in a yellow blur.

"Tails, what the hell are you doing?" Saito yelled as Tails shut the canopy, rushing to boot up the Tornado. He frantically pointed toward the corner of the building as the four attackers came around, weapons raised. The japanese boy's face drained of color from surprise as he scrambled to relay orders to the others and draw Derflinger while Tails brought his mecha to bear, the stomping of the heavy craft shaking the ground.

The white-haired muscly man slammed his mace into the ground, causing a large stone to sprout out of the ground and rise into the air. "Suck on this, you fat bastard," Tails muttered as he flipped the safety cap on the stick to reveal a trigger, giving it a squeeze. The forward-mounted heavy laser cannons barked, letting out a burst that impacted the floating boulder as the man swung his mace at it like a baseball bat. With a muted bang from inside the canopy, he watched as the boulder exploded into thousands of droplets of molten stone, spraying the white-haired man with magma that sent him scrambling to remove the burning liquid.

The younger boy, who had been calmly following behind the action with his weird musical instrument, placed it on the ground and blew into the mouthpiece. A small shockwave rippled along the ground, shaking the Tornado as it turned toward its next target. Without warning, water sprang out of the ground from every square inch of dirt and stone, filling the field like a shallow lake that slowly rose to knee level. "What the hell?" Tails thought as he watched the white-haired man splash down into the water, a blast of steam rising from where he fell as the liquid stone cooled. Loud chirping filled his ears as a warning flashed on the main screen of the cockpit, warning him that water was being sucked into the turbines beyond acceptable levels. "Shit…" he swore as he scrambled to shut down the Tornado, popping the canopy and drawing his T-Buster. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see Bleu's female companion, who had darted forward in the confusion, scrambling to maintain control of Louise. She quickly lost her grip on the pink-haired girl as she struggled to fight off Lèontine, her griffon talons flying in a razor-tipped dance of blades.

Tails turned his attention back to the three men, still standing by the corner of the building. Bleu rushed forward through the water to meet Saito head-on, blades clashing as Saito drew Derflinger into an immediate swing. He brought his T-Buster up and loosed a bolt on the white-haired man before he could intervene on Saito's fight, knocking him out cold as the electricity arced from water droplet to water droplet across his stone-riddled skin. The electricity jumped through the water into everyone else, causing them to simultaneously twitch as the energy coursed through them and dispersed along the water into the ground. "Better not do that again," he thought, stowing his T-Buster and drawing his scimitar once more as he stood up from his seat.

"Newcomers, Bleu!" the young boy with the instrument yelled, pointing around the corner of the building. The boy then collapsed, without any warning or injury. Tails watched from the Tornado as the water slowly began to take on a green tint around the boy's fallen body. As the green coloration spread, it came into contact with Bleu and knocked him out cold, falling face first in the water.

"Guys, get out of the water! It's poisoned!" Tails yelled, waving them over to the Tornado. The green water began to spread faster and faster, catching Saito and the others within seconds and knocking them out almost instantly. As Tails undid his cloak to take to the air, he could see three figures dressed in green garb round the corner of the manor, lifting people up by their hair to check their face. He quickly drew his T-Buster and leveled it at the closest of the three figures. "Hey, step away from them!" he yelled.

The three froze in place and looked at each other for a moment, shrugging and muttering behind green bandannas wrapped around their face. The central figure raised his fingers and snapped twice, a small aura of green light surrounding his hand. Tails suddenly felt woozy, struggling to maintain his aim as his strength rapidly faded. With the last of his energy sapped, he lost balance and fell from the nose of the Tornado, asleep before he hit the ground…


	106. Season 4 Chapter 23

A voice rang out in the silent darkness, muffled at first but growing clearer. "…with us? Come on, Tails, get up!" the voice said. Tails slowly came to, rubbing his eyes open and shielding them from the brightness of the afternoon sun. "Hey, there we are!" Guiche said, helping Tails to his feet.

"Ugh, what happened?" Tails groaned, rubbing his aching head as he tried to make sense of his surroundings. "Are those people gone? What happened to the water?"

"Don't worry, they're gone. I got the Queen to safety through the mirror and came out to find you all, only to see you all passed out here. However, we have bad news. Saito, miss Tiffania, and your friend miss Lèontine are gone."

"What?!" Tails exclaimed, snapping to attention and frantically looking around. Gimli and the other two Ordine Knights members were busy helping the others to their feet, still half-asleep and just waking up. Just as Guiche said, Lèontine and Saito were nowhere to be found. Derflinger was still lying on the ground, his sheath lying several feet away with it's shoulder strap cut. "Oh shit," he mumbled to himself, briskly walking over to pick up Derflinger. "Derflinger, did you see where they took Saito and the others?"

"No, idiot!" Derflinger replied. "A, I was underwater when Saito dropped me. B, I was out cold like the rest of you. Magic affects us too, you know."

"Shit, that's right!" Tails said, rubbing his forehead to relieve his headache. "Derf, those attackers. Who were they? One of them said their name was Bleu, the fencer guy Saito faced. He called the muscular guy Jack, if I remember right."

"Bleu's a Gallian name. Probably some mercenaries out for a bounty, yeah? Gallia employed lots of them, since the official army's pretty small between all the nobles."

"Well, whoever those people in green were, Bleu was with them," Tails concluded. "Anyway, back to my first point. Bleu had a stone, like the fire stones in Romalia, but it was blue and made gusts of wind when he broke it. It blew away my shield like confetti, and Ring couldn't talk to me after that. He said it was dispel magic?"

Derflinger let out a long sigh. "Well, that's pretty bad."

"Ring's not dead, is he?" Tails asked, looking back at his scimitar where it lay next to the Tornado.

"Hah, I wish!" Derf snorted indignantly. "It takes a lot more than Dispel to kill us. All it did was break his binding on the blade, sending him back to your runes in a dormant state. He'll be back within a couple of days, maybe a week if he's too lazy to stop playing hooky."

"Well, that's good," Tails sighed. "Anyways, so those green dudes. The short one dressed a bit like Tiffania. Elves?"

"No doubt, if you're right about the clothing."

"Where do they live?"

"Waaaaay south of Gallia, in a desert country they call Nephthys. There's an ocean between the two countries, so these 'elves' you saw are really fuckin' far from home, if that's the case."

Tails carried Derflinger over to his sheath and gently slid him inside, carrying the whole arrangement by the broken strap to the Tornado. He hopped up into the craft's pilot's seat and flipped a few switches to boot up the electronics, performing a quick system sweep for damage. An x-ray-style sketching of the Tornado appeared onscreen, followed by several orange warning messages overlayed upon the image.

"Excess fluid buildup, my twin-tailed butt," he grumbled, dropping Derflinger in his seat and hopping down from the craft. He picked up his scimitar and jammed it back into the sheath on his waist as he walked over to the side of the Tornado's legs, opening the turbine service hatch and sticking his head inside to inspect the damage. In the dim sunlight that filtered in, he could see thousands of droplets glimmering over every surface of the complex interior, sprayed around like a sprinkler by the sharp turbine blades during the fight.

"Is it going to work?" Reynald asked, stepping forward to take a peek.

Tails shook his head. "Too much water. It's waterproof in-flight, when the heat from compression of the turbine evaporates any rain the jet catches before it gets anywhere inside. The turbines only run in idle when in walker mode, though, to dispel excess energy from the Emeralds. It sucked up too much water and threw it everywhere inside."

"Can we do anything to help?" the boy said, adjusting his glasses.

"Yeah, now that I think about it," Tails replied. "Montmorency, can you come here for a sec?"

The blond-haired girl, still drowsy from her forced nap, slowly stumbled over to the craft. "Yeah?"

"You're a water mage, right? Can you get all of this water outta here by chance?"

"Mmmph, yeah I think I can," she said, drawing her short wooden wand and pointing it at the open hatch. She began to chant, her rhythm unwavering as rote memorization took over from her training. One by one, the water droplets began to collect at the tip of her wand, forming into a larger and larger ball as the turbines slowly drained. Several minutes passed as the sudden stream of droplets slowed to a trickle, finally coming to a dead stop. Montmorency casually lobbed the ball over her shoulder, halting her chanting to end the spell. The ball of water nailed Malicorne in the back of the head, liberally dousing the poor fat boy in water as he stumbled around the lawn. "Sorry, Malicorne!" she called, casually ignoring the boy's cries of shock.

"Alright, now the other side," Tails instructed, leading her over to the other turbine and opening the service hatch. When the process was complete, he went around and shut both both service hatches and disappeared into the manor, returning with an armful of the Panzerfaust launchers and a field backpack on his back.

"Tails, what are you doing?" Guiche asked as he helped Montmorency back to the manor.

"What do you think?" the fox called back. He paused to stuff the launchers into the bag warhead first before climbing up the side of the Tornado and setting the bag in the seat behind his own.

"We're going with you!" Louise said.

"Well," Tails grunted as he hopped down from the craft. "I'd love to have you, but I don't have room if I'm bringing all three of them back."

Guiche re-emerged from the manor, having overheard the conversation. "I had the Queen call Colbert for assistance during the fight. He's obviously missed the action, but he should be here any minute with the Ostland. We're fighting for our co-captain, too! Right, Ordine Knights?"

Gimli, Reynald and Malicorne let out a resounding cheer. "Fine, fine,” Tails said, nodding. “I'll hold out until the Ostland shows, but if Colbert isn't here within the next hour, I'm outta here. I'd prefer to intercept them in midair, if I can catch them."

"Good luck with that!" Derflinger scoffed. "Elvish airships are leagues better than any human creations. I bet they'd give Colbert more than a run for his money."

Tails laughed. "If you're telling me some magic-fueled wooden tub is scooting along at four times the speed of sound and not violently disintegrating, I think you need your eyes checked. I'll be able to catch them," he said, reassuringly patting the leg of the Tornado.

"I dunno about you guys, but I'm gonna go grab a snack," Kirche said, standing by the front doors of the manor. "No sense in freaking out while we're waiting." Everyone but Tails slowly filtered into the house, leaving him alone to mull over the control panels of the Tornado in silence…

* * *

 

A loud roar filled Tails' ears as he snapped out of his short nap, eyes popping open to see the Ostland majestically floating overhead as it descended toward the ground. The hulking craft touched down with a loud crack as it crushed the flagstones it landed on, bringing the occupants of the manor rushing out as the boarding ramp lowered. professor Colbert stood at the top of the ramp, his smooth wooden staff in hand and his bespectacled eyes scanning the crowd of his students rushing toward him.

"Hey, Jean!" Kirche called, running up to the ramp and hugging the older man. "Glad you could join us."

"Yes, well…" The man said, blushing slightly from embarrassment. "I was told you were in trouble? I came as fast as I could."

"We still are, sorta," Tails said as he hopped down from the Tornado to greet Colbert. "We were attacked. Saito, Lèontine, and Tiffania were kidnapped by elves with the help of Gallian mercenaries."

Professor Colbert's face drained of color as began to grasp the severity of the situation. "Well, then, good thing I brought extra coal! We'll be off at once, then. I presume you'll be flying alongside?"

Tails nodded. "I plan to fly alongside until we get close and go in fast to do a quick scout with the Tornado. Once we know what we're doing, we go in and get them back."

"Do you even have any clue where they're being held?"

"Nope. We don't know anything other than it was the elves who took them, not the Gallians."

"Hmm," Colbert muttered, rubbing his chin. "I can't say this is a good idea, as, with all worst-case scenarios, death or war is a possible outcome. That's not something we could easily deal with. They want them all, but Joseph was…" he trailed off.

Tails eyed the professor suspiciously. "What are you talking about? You know why they took them, don't you?"

"Well, it's only a possibility," professor Colbert explained, shaking his head. "I'll tell you at a future date, as it's a bit sensitive. Right now, it's absolutely urgent that we get Saito back at all costs."

"Tell you what," the fox replied, running back to his jet as the other students boarded and took their stations. He returned with one of the four yellow headsets from the Tornado and handed it to the man. "You can tell me as we fly. If it's important, I need to know. Kirche will show you how to turn it on."

Colbert sighed and took the device. "Very well. You may not like the outcome, though."

"Yeah, well, there's a lot of things we don't like," Tails called as he returned to the Tornado. "But we're still here, right? I'll see you in the air." The fox hopped up into the Tornado and sealed the canopy over his head, quickly adjusting his cape and sheath with Ring's unoccupied scimitar sitting comfortably at his waist before booting up the large turbines. His seatbelt reached out from the chair behind him and pulled him back into his seat as the turbines spooled up beyond idle speeds, the whine of the motors filling his ears. Donning his own headset, he clutched the throttle lever and control stick, pushing them both forward to send the Tornado clomping across the field, out from underneath the Ostland's massive wingspan. He opened up with the throttle, allowing the Tornado to climb into the air in a vertical takeoff. Behind him, the massive blades of the Ostland's steam-powered turbines began to rotate, slowly picking up speed as the craft floated into the air under magic levitation power. Within minutes, the two aircraft were cruising at a steady speed southward, just below the cloud level.

Tails turned on his headset and adjusted his microphone. "Professor Colbert, you there?"

"Hmm? Oh, my! It works!" He could hear the bald professor say, thinking aloud over the headset. Despite knowing Colbert meant better, the fox rolled his eyes at the unintended insult of his tech. "Yes, I can hear you just fine."

"So, what was it that you wanted to tell me?"

"Ah, right. Hrmm, where should we start?"

"How about at the beginning. Why did those elves take Tiffania, Saito and Lèontine?"

"I wouldn't call that the beginning, but… Anyway, as a familiar of a Void Mage, Saito plays a crucial role in a prophecy that they, the elvish race, thoroughly believe in. Same with Miss Tiffania, whether they know it or not.

Tails rolled his eyes. "Let me guess, a doomsday prophecy where he plays the role of a key to destroying the entire known universe, yadda yadda yadda. Been there, done that. What happens when he DOES accidentally start this thing?"

"Not him alone, but all void mages. It's said that when all of the void mages and their familiars are brought together, the beginning of the end of the world will come. The elves call Void magic the devil's powers, so it’s no surprise they would see Saito as a literal ‘devil’s advocate’, I suppose."

"So, they're thinking that if they kidnap Saito and keep him away from the others, the end of the world won't happen. Didn't we already bring everyone together in Romalia? You know, despite killing two of them. And doesn't that sorta screw things up, too?"

"Not quite! That's the problem. Despite knowing that the four void mages are Vittorio, Miss Louise, Miss Tiffania and King Joseph, Miss Tiffania has no familiar. So, the meeting in Romalia was, for the intents and purposes of starting this elvish apocalypse, more or less moot. However, if they are still after Saito and the others, the elves might not know this."

Tails kicked back in his seat and let autopilot take over. "So, they're going to execute Saito and Tiffania, right? To try to keep her from gaining a familiar, and to keep Louise from having one?"

"That's what I would guess."

"Well, that still doesn't explain why they DIDN'T take Louise, and DID take Lèontine."

"I couldn't begin to tell you, Miles. Perhaps they took Miss Tiffania because she is an elf, or at least half elf, without knowing she was a Void mage. As for Miss Lèontine, for the study of Rhyme dragons? I'm not sure."

"So they wouldn't kill Lèontine, right?"

"Most likely not. Perhaps they would study her magic, or perhaps use her for a breeding program to boost the population of Rhyme Dragons."

"Eugh, save the thought," Tails complained, shaking his head in disgust. "How long until we get there at this speed?"

"Depends on where 'there' is for you. If you mean their capitol, then most likely a day and a half. That's assuming we aren't stopped on their side of the sea by a border patrol airship, in which we will either have to outrun or attempt to come back later and find a hole in their surveillance if we aren't imprisoned immediately. The shortest route is by crossing the sea between Romalia and Nephthys and circling back to their capitol over land."

"Fine. We'll take that route. If you get caught, buy me some time so I can blast past without them opening fire.

Colbert went silent for a moment, taking off his headset to relay some orders to Gimli and Reynaldo that Tails could barely hear over his own headset. "Going in alone is suicide. I can't let you do that!"

"Well, you can, and you will, unless you can find some way to get a couple thousand more miles per hour out of the Ostland’s turbines,” Tails stated bluntly. “We can't afford to let them find Louise too, so you'll have to keep her hidden when the guards come aboard. Sending her into the heart of elvish territory would be just what they want, right?"

More muted muttering filtered through the soft static of Tails' headset before the bald-headed professor got back on the line. "Very well. I trust your judgement on this one, but  _please_  do be careful."

Tails grinned. "Hey, what's the worst that could go wrong? We all die and the end of the world is avoided. Not to sound pessimistic, but that's a win-win scenario for you guys, at least."

"Or, the elves are wrong because they're pompous assholes that need a good one-upping," Derflinger interjected, popping out of his sheath beneath Tails' seat.

"That too," Tails replied with a smirk.

"What was that?" Colbert said, having missed Derflinger's comment.

"Nothing, professor. Just keep showing me the way."


	107. Season 4 Chapter 24

Groaning as she clawed her way back to reality from a deep sleep, Lèontine slowly pushed herself up against the pillow and blankets she had been resting on and rubbed her eyes. Outside, she could hear odd chatter as it filtered into the small, wooden house. Sunlight streamed into the cabin through a crack in the shades that covered a window by the door, illuminating specks of dust as they erratically floated through the air with a mind of their own. "Where am I?" she thought, removing the bedcover that had been draped over her and standing up. She smoothed out her dress with the back of her feather-coated paws and fluttered her wings to give them a stretch before heading to the door.

She opened the door and stepped outside, taking in the view of massive sand dunes that surrounded what appeared to be an oasis, complete with the few odd palm trees and low swampland grass that filled the water's edge where it could survive. Saito and Tiffania were standing on a wooden dock, talking to a blond-haired girl in a green and brown dress similar to what Tiffania was now wearing that she recognized to be elvish. Saito's attention strayed from the conversation they were having as he nodded to greet Lèontine, waving her over to join in.

"Ah, you're awake!" the elvish girl said, nodding to her.

"Yeah. Where are we? Nephthys?" Lèontine asked, rubbing her eyes to help acclimate them to the bright desert sun.

"Good one! You're the first to get it right. I'd expect that from a Rhyme Dragon though," the elvish girl said. "I'm Lucitania. Nice to meet you!"

"And you, I suppose. Let me guess, we can't leave?"

Lucitania nodded. "You're all here more or less for me to research. The Council wants to speak to those two later, though," she said, gesturing toward Saito and Tiffania. "They might jump to a conclusion about the prophecy and murder them, though," she added cheerily. Saito and Tiffania turned pale and began mumbling to each other.

Lèontine laughed. "You guys still believe in that load of horsecrap?"

"Yeah, more or less. We have no way to disprove it, so the Council takes it pretty seriously. It doesn't help that that idiot Vittorio tried to speed things up."

"Sounds right up his alley," Lèontine said with a sigh. "So, what's the plan for today then?"

"Not much. I may have you do some blood tests and some physical evaluations, but we can deal with those later. My uncle's supposed to be dropping by with the outcome of today's Council meeting about what to do with the savage and the half-elf."

"He's not a savage!" Tiffania interrupted, unusually angry. "Saito's better than that!" Saito pulled her back by the shoulder and shushed her, trying to avoid a fight.

"Well, that's part of my research, anyway," Lucitania continued. "Anyway, I'm going to make some lunch. Wait here until I'm done." The elf girl walked back to the cabin, disappearing behind the heavy wooden door.

Saito let out a sigh and stretched back, popping his back. "These people are crazy. We’ve gotta get out of here before they do anything drastic."

"You won't be able to," Lèontine said. "Their magic isn't like human magic. They're more defensive and specialty stuff, rather than the whole 'fire and ice' offensive stuff humans use. If an elf wants an area locked down, then you might as well consider the place impregnable." She walked over to the edge of the dock and kicked off her shoes, peeling off her socks before taking a seat and dipping her feet in the cool water.

"What makes you so sure? We were able to get into Al Hambra to get you and Sylphid out just fine, and Tails said there was at least one elf working for Joseph," Saito retorted.

"That's because Vitartial, the elf Tails probably saw, wasn't doing anything," she replied. "He was only giving Joseph what he asked for. Magic stones, potions, and the occasional field dirty work, I’m sure. Elves can be notoriously lazy and won’t ever do more than you pay them to. Trust me, elvish nature magic is a pain in the rear, and you'll know it when you see it."

"What happened? Have you faced elves before?" Tiffania asked, walking over to the edge of the dock and taking a seat with her legs tucked underneath her.

Lèontine tucked in her wings so that Saito could join the two women at the end of the dock. "Well, this isn't the first time people have tried to capture me, as you know. Before I was locked up in Al Hambra, an elf expedition team tried to capture me in southern Gallia, near where I lived. They corralled me into a cave and set a barrier on the entrance so that they could try to experiment with me. Any time I came near the entrance, it would shut the entrance off with diamond-hard rocks that would cut me whenever I touched them."

"Is that why you wouldn't go downstairs back at the manor?" Saito asked.

"Not quite, but close. That actually started when someone pulled a similar stunt, when I was really young. Locked me up in a cave with golems to try to tame me, but an earthquake hit and caused a cave-in. I was locked in for what seemed like ages until a large mole came and dug his way through my cave, so I followed him out. I get the chills from going underground ever since."

"So how did you get away from the elves?" Tiffania asked, enthralled by the story.

Lèontine looked over at the half-elf girl. "You're not squeamish, are you?"

Blushing, Tiffania meekly shook her head, allowing Lèontine to continue. "I waited until one of them forgot to bring in his sleeping-spell magic stone with him,” she said. “When he came in to feed me and try another experiment to form a familiar's pact with me, I knocked him out and carried him with me out of the cave. The magic wouldn't trip if it was one of the elves, you see. As soon as I was out, I slit his throat and took out the remaining elves before they could react and just flew away."

"So, your saying that if we try to leave, a wall of stone will pop out of the ground and block us?" Saito asked.

"Nah, not stone at least. It's all based on the environment it's used in, so more likely it'd be a blast of sand or a sentient vine that tosses you into the lake or something," Lèontine said, pointing to the swamp grass that grew at the water's edge. "That's the whole idea of nature magic; it changes based on the environment of the user. You can choose what element you want to use, but you can't make up your own, like Tabitha with her ice."

"Huh."

Behind them, Lucitania burst out of the cabin carrying a tray of sandwiches. She carried them over to the three at the end of the dock and offered them each one. "I'm not sure if this is what you savages normally eat, but this is supposed to be a recipe from your lands," she said as Saito took his sandwich.

"Do you really think we're that different from you?" Saito asked, taking a bite of his sandwich. He struggled to hide a grimace as he hastily swallowed, biting his tongue to generate some saliva in an attempt to clear the foul taste.

"Don't like it?" Lucitania asked, taking back the empty tray. "I figured you would, but maybe I messed up somewhere."

"It tastes… off, that's all. What's in it?"

"Let's see… Palm tree smoked fish, some of the local edible grasses, a few wild onions, and some stuff you call 'mustard'."

Saito nodded and hesitantly took another bite. He looked over to find Tiffania in a similar situation, but Lèontine had already scarfed hers down completely, much to his amazement.

"Oh, look. Uncle's here," Lucitania said, looking off into the distant sky. It took a minute or so before Saito could register the pulsing sound of flapping wings in the distance, slowly approaching their location. Suddenly, a red dragon burst over one of the massive sand dunes in the distance, clearly carrying two riders that were dressed in green and brown garb similar to Lucitania's. The three stood up as the dragon touched down, allowing the two riders to dismount. One of them was wearing a brown wide-brimmed hat and appeared to be much older than the other man, more of a boy in appearance. The older man took off his hat, revealing his flowing blond hair and light blue eyes.

"Hi uncle Vitartial!" Lucitania said, walking over to give the elf man a hug. The man returned the embrace for a short moment before turning to face his new guests. "Ah, you must be the Void Mage and her familiar," he said, nodding toward Tiffania and Saito. "I expected the fox to be here as well, but, I suppose we can't have everything."

"Sorry, uncle," Lucitania apologized. "We couldn't carry all five of them in one run, but I just HAD to have the Rhyme Dragon as well. The human is also one of the Familiars, so, being a human, I prioritized him over the fox."

Lèontine let out a short, barking laugh. "You guys forgot to bring Tails? Oh man, you guys REALLY screwed up!"

"Yes, well, it's of no matter," Vitartial replied. "The Council's coming to a decision soon, so there's very little help he can be to you as of now."

"What, they haven't already?" Lucitania asked, surprised.

The other dragon rider finally stepped forward, pulling down his riding bandanna to reveal his face. He appeared to be about Lucitania's age, sporting equally blond hair and light blue eyes. "The Council is evenly split, as of now," the boy said. "The Union hippies want them to live, as usual. Everyone else wants them dead, but because the Union holds the majority, they were able to tie it up despite a few of their own members dissenting. They're working on a tiebreaker now."

"So, how long will that take?" Saito added.

The young elf gave Saito an icy stare. "No less than a day. We'll be back to pick you up tomorrow, so you might want to prepare yourself for the inside of a cell wall, savage. That's if they don't execute you on the spot. I'd be glad to do it for them, if they weren't a bunch of indecisive old men."

"Shut up, Ari!" Lucitania intervened, catching the boy's attention. "I haven't even asked them any questions yet and you're already wanting to murder my specimens. If you even touch them, our engagement is off!"

"Oh come on, Luci! We can always get you more, but these ones are a critical problem!" Ari said, his tone softening. "Once the Council has their way with them, we can get you more."

"Lies! You'd gripe and moan about every trip we take into human territory, and continue being a little pansy around every single one we keep, thinking they're going to be the 'end of the world'," she replied in a taunting tone. "You've done it every time, so why would I expect anything different?"

Vitartial let out a cough, recapturing his guests' attention while Ari took Lucitania aside to talk with her in private. "I'd imagine you're tired and want to spend your last day a bit better than this," he said, gesturing toward Ari. "We'll be leaving momentarily. Is the Gallian girl doing well?"

"Tabitha? Yeah, she's as fine as can be, I suppose," Saito said.

"Yes, well, I heard about her mother. It surprised me when she came home to take the throne. She seemed more mature, which is saying quite a bit. It's a shame she got caught up in things. I almost felt bad for her after seeing what Joseph did to her with my potions and fire stones. But, the old man got what he deserved in the end, so, there's that, at least. Ari, come."

The two elves climbed back on their dragon and took to the skies, disappearing over the dunes the way they had came. Lucitania was standing at the opposite end of the dock from Saito and the girls, still blushing from whatever Ari had said. She quickly stormed back into the house, leaving her three captive guests at the end of the dock.

"Well, I guess we just wait?" Tiffania offered, looking around the small oasis.

"I dunno about you guys, but I'm going for a swim," Saito said. He stripped off his jacket, undershirt, socks, and shoes before diving into the water and swimming out to a small rock that protruded from the surface of the lake.

Lèontine shrugged. "Well, if we've got nothing to do, I guess it's okay." While Saito was busy swimming to the rock, the two girls quickly undressed. With a flash of light, Lèontine returned to her natural griffon form, taking to the air with her massive wings while Tiffania jumped in. She gained plenty of altitude before tucking in her wings and curling in her four paws, plummeting through the air as the world's biggest “human” cannonball.

Saito and Tiffania hastily took cover behind the rock as Lèontine impacted the water, creating a geyser that shot well over fifteen feet into the air and sent massive waves sprawling across the water's surface. A muted flash of light below the water's surface, and Lèontine returned to the surface in her human form, swimming over to the rock to join the two drenched swimmers. "The water feels great!" she commented, sweeping her wet hair out of her eyes.

"Uhh, yeah," Saito said, avoiding eye contact with the two naked women. His eyes wandered to the rock, taking in the small details of the moss that grew on it. Suddenly, something caught his eye, causing him to double back and tear away a small patch of moss from the rock. Underneath, shining metal plates studded with flush rivets greeted him, giving him a tingling, elated sense in his chest. "One sec," he said, diving deep underneath the water's surface.

In the cool, slightly murky water, he could make out the smooth lines of the metal object extending into the depths of the oasis. Shattered glass and aluminum coated by a patchwork coating of algae glittered in the sunlight that penetrated to the lake's floor. On the deepest part of the exposed metal, he could make out a large circular marking.

"The red sun of the Japanese SDF Airforce division!" he thought, swimming closer to the wing of the unknown aircraft. Fuel pods extended from what appeared to be the left wing, joined by the remains of unused air-to-air and air-to-ground missiles that were likely ruined by the water. He quickly scrambled back to the surface as he let out the last of the breath he'd been holding, taking a moment to rest before inhaling deeply and diving back again. He swam down to the exposed jet wing and placed his hand on it, watching his runes for any sign of light. After several seconds without a reaction, he quickly patted down the missiles, still failing to light up his runes. After a quick final look, he returned to the surface where the two women were waiting expectantly.

"So, what's got you all excited?" Lèontine asked, rubbing her hand over the smooth metal that Saito had exposed.

"Well, it's something from my world," he replied, dismayed. "It's an F4 Phantom II, a jet sorta like Tails' Tornado. All the weapons are there, I think, but it's too broken to work. The water's ruined it from all the years of sitting here after the pilot crash-landed it. Probably ran out of fuel, since I couldn't see any signs of combat."

"That's amazing!" Tiffania said, looking over the tail of the jet that extended out of the water. "It's so odd that it ended up here, of all places."

"Well, not really, I suppose," Saito thought, looking around. "At low speeds, he'd have a better chance surviving a landing in water than in the sand, I suppose."

"Were you hoping it could get us out of here?" Lèontine asked.

Saito rubbed the back of his head, racking his brain. "Well, maybe if we could detatch one of the missiles and rig it up to blow, we could use it to blackmail our way out of here… Nah, there's no way I could get one of those dismounted without tools. Even then, I have no clue how."

"Well, you _almost_ had a Tails moment there," she joked. "Anyway, I'm going to do a couple laps, then I'm getting out. See ya." She swam for the dock, leaving Saito and Tiffania by themselves as she turned right and began her endless circling, her mind wandering.

* * *

 

The day passed slowly as the three captives frittered away their time, swimming and playing card games while taking breaks to answer the occasional question session that Lucitania had written up. By the time Lèontine finished with her fourth physical evaluation, it was growing dark outside and the desert air was rapidly cooling off.

"Well, that should wrap it up for the day," the elf stated, shutting her notebook and tossing it in a drawer. "You're free for the rest of the night, but try to keep it down. It'll be a big day tomorrow, so I'm going to get some sleep."

"Yeah, yeah," Lèontine dismissed, taking a seat at the kitchen table to put her socks and shoes back on. She took a sip of her tea, setting it back on the table as the hot, bitter liquid scalded her tongue. Tiffania and Saito were already asleep, so she decided to turn in for the night herself. She laid down on her impromptu bed between Saito and Tiffania, taking off her socks and shoes and setting them beside her pillow. She shut her eyes and tried to lull herself to sleep, taking turns focusing on each persons' breathing among what felt like a dull roar in the otherwise dead-silent room. Within minutes, though, she could hear Saito sit up in bed and get up, tiptoeing across the room to the door. With a soft creak of the door's hinges, he slipped out of the house, off to do something she didn't care about.

"Miss Lèontine?" Tiffania whispered, shuffling around in bed. "Are you awake?"

"Yeah. What's up?"

"Can I ask you a question?"

"Sure."

Tiffania paused for a moment, collecting her thoughts before continuing. "When we were in Romalia, professor Colbert helped me perform a spell to summon a Familiar. Suddenly… Saito appeared. He fell out of some green bubble thing! I haven't finalized the pact yet, though…"

"I get it," Lèontine said, smirking. "You like him, but you think he's with Louise. Hey, there's only one way to find out! If you love him, making him your familiar and binding him to you is the most surefire way to beat Louise. I'm sure Lucitania knows all about that, don't you?” she added accusatively, glancing over toward the elf girl’s bed. “Come on, I know you're still awake. Your breathing was off, I could tell you’re listening."

Across the room, Lucitania giggled. "Good ears! I'll have to mark that down in the morning. Yes, I suppose that's what it's like. I love Ari, but he's so blockheaded sometimes that I just need to… nudge him in the right direction, sometimes."

"More like blackmail him," Lèontine added with a short laugh. "Anyway, you should probably do it now, before Louise gets here. You might not have a chance, otherwise."

Tiffania thought over her options for a moment before sitting up and getting out of bed. "Thank you, Miss Lèontine. You're right! Maybe I can win him over…" With that, she walked to the door and stepped outside, latching the door shut behind her.

The two remaining girls lay in silence for a moment. "So, since when did you become a professional love doctor?" Lucitania asked.

Lèontine sighed. "Just… experience, that's all."

"Recent or older?"

"Don't you think your little questionnaires are going a little too far?"

"This one's optional. I'll keep the details off the record, if you like."

"A bit of both, I suppose."

"Were they human, or other species?" Lucitania asked, a note of excitement creeping into her voice.

"The first was a Rhyme Dragon," Lèontine said, thinking her next response over a bit. "The second… I'm not so sure, to be honest."

"Huh. Well, I'll leave it at that. I need to keep an eye on those two idiots, or they might kill themselves trying to escape." Right on cue, a loud yell resounded through the air, followed by a muted impact. Lucitania sighed and got out of bed, walking over to the window by the door. "That's one thing I always found fascinating about the savages. They have remarkable will. Some are so stubborn that they kill themselves trying to reach their goal."

Lèontine laughed. "You say that like being obnoxious and hardheaded is unique to them. Anyway, I'm headed to bed. 'Night." Fluffing up her pillow, she shuffled around to find a comfortable position to sleep, her mind drifting back to an earlier time…


	108. Season 4 Chapter 25

"Morning, everyone."

Lèontine's eyes shot open, taking in the morning light that filtered through the dusty window. The loud popping and savory smell of cooking bacon filled the small two-room house, bringing on a pang of hunger. She sat up in bed, removing Saito's misplaced arm from her stomach where it'd landed from his tossing and turning the previous night. "Creep needs to learn some privacy," she thought, rolling her eyes and adjusting her dress straps before getting out of bed.

Across the room, Lucitania stood over a small fireplace with a pan, cooking up some breakfast meats in a pan while a couple ears of corn roasted on a small spit to the side of the fire. "About time someone got up," she said, turning to face her guest. "Things will be ready in a minute."

"And here I thought you elves ate nothing but greens and fish at every meal," Lèontine joked, noticing the mountainous pile of bacon and sausage the elf girl was cooking up.

"That’s true, normally most elves don't eat much red meat," Lucitania replied. "After studying sav… humans for so long, it's sorta grown on me. Besides, since it's their last meal, Uncle brought all of this this morning as a sort of farewell," she added, nodding toward Saito and Tiffania.

Lèontine searched through the kitchen-area cupboards, withdrawing a small mug and tossing a small silk teabag inside. "Did the Council already make a decision?" she asked, filling her mug with hot water from a kettle set beside the fire to keep warm.

"No," Lucitania said with a sigh, shaking her head. "My research period has run out. Those old fogeys on the Council were worried about how long I could hold the human and the half-elf when I proposed to keep you three. Safety concerns, really. Anyway, they only granted me one day to hold and research these two before they wanted them properly locked up. I'd imagine by the time we get there, they'll have re-convened and made a decision, though, so you can imagine how little time they have left."

"Fair enough. So, when are you and Ari getting married?" Lèontine took a seat at the table, gently blowing on her tea while it steeped to cool it down. Behind her, Tiffania was beginning to stir awake as the sunlight slowly intensified.

"Pretty soon. It was actually originally to be a few days ago, but then this job put it on hold," Lucitania replied, setting aside the pan of meat and fetching several plates.

"And that's why Ari's mad about your research? Also, you've got two more plates than you need," Lèo noted.

Lucitania nodded toward the door. "Uncle and Ari are outside, enjoying the morning, so they'll be joining us too. Uncle's probably giving Ari some fatherly lecture, something he's been doing a lot as we get closer to the big day. As for Ari, he's always mad about my research. He's just like those super-conservative old men on the Council, always assuming the worst of humans. But, as much as I hate to say it, he's kept me in check and even alive after some of the more… interesting research missions."

"Sounds like a good fit," Lèontine said, discarding her teabag and taking a sip of her tea. She reached over to the foot of her makeshift bed and grabbed her socks and shoes, tugging them on.

"From the outside, it wouldn't look like it, right? But yeah, I like him and he likes me, and it works out. Say, what about you, those two romances of yours? You got me interested last night."

Lèo looked back over her shoulder, watching Saito and Tiffania to ensure they were still asleep. The sizzle of grease from the pan died away as Lucitania extracted the meats and divided them among the plates, an odd moment of silence filling the room. "Well, the first one was quite a while ago. When I was about a hundred and twenty or so," she began, taking another sip of her tea.

"And how old are you now?" Lucitania asked. She cracked several eggs into the pan and placed it back onto the fire, letting the meat juices soak in with the egg whites.

Lèontine thought for a moment. "Probably about a hundred and seventy, give or take a few years. Rhyme Dragons physically age roughly ten times slower than humans, but we mature mentally at the same rate. Anyway, I was sneaking into a Gallian noble's place to swap some books out, when I ran into another Rhyme Dragon in his human form. He seemed like a nice guy, seemed only thirty or so years older than I was. Anyway, he taught me a lot about the world outside Gallia, and after a while, well… I sorta liked him."

"So what happened?"

"After I confessed, he became horribly withdrawn, but in a polite way. I chased him a lot to try to win him, but he always told me he couldn't stay in any one place, that he was being chased by someone. He would interrupt conversations even by changing back to his true form and taking off into the woods, as if that someone were always just  _thiiiis_  close to getting him," she said, gesturing with her fingers held millimeters apart.

"Huh," Lucitania said, fascinated by the story. She turned back to her cooking for a moment to flip the eggs, setting aside the more done ones in a cooler section of the pan. "Did you ever see him again? Is he still alive?"

Lèontine shrugged. "Messian was a crafty fox, a true escape artist. I doubt he's dead, but I hadn't seen or heard from him for several years before I ended up being imprisoned in Gallia."

Lucitania turned, giving Lèontine a wry smile. "Let me guess. Your current interest is the two-tailed fox thing we saw when we captured you?"

"Yeah…" she replied, blushing slightly. "They have a lot of similarities. Wicked smart, honest, easily embarrassed, and…"

"Lèo and Tails, sitting in a tree! K I S S I N G!" Saito butted in, laughing to himself as he rolled out of bed. "Looks like Tails will be getting a couple embarrassing stories when we get back."

"Yeah, well, you better keep your mouth shut or you might become permanently disabled when Louise finds out about last night with Tiffania! Don't think we don't know about that" Lèontine retorted, taking another sip of tea and taking the plate that Lucitania handed her. "Anyway, wake up Tiffania. Vitartial's here to haul you two away, and he's probably not that patient."

As Saito busied himself with waking up Tiffania and Lucitania served up the rest of the plates with the fresh eggs, meats and corn, the front door opened. Vitartial stepped in, with Ari and his perpetual scowl close behind. "Well then, it's about time," he said, taking a seat at the table. Saito and Tiffania took a seat next to Lèontine, avoiding Ari's aggressive looks as they waited for the meals to be served. Everyone thanked Lucitania for the meal and began to eat, waiting for the next move...

* * *

 

"So, how far left do we have to go?" Tails said, yawning as he stretched out in his seat. He reached back into the second seat and withdrew a couple of sandwiches he'd saved from dinner the night before, devouring one to quell his empty stomach's grumbling.

"We should see land soon," Colbert replied over the radio. "Our stop for dinner and supplies in Romalia set us back an hour, but we should still reach the capital by an hour or so past noon."

"Alright. Let me know if you need anything." Tails kicked back in his seat, watching the water roll by down below as the two aircraft sped across the ocean.

"I know what I need. A break from all this bullshit," Derflinger said.

"You could say that again," Tails replied, his bored gaze wandering over the plethora of controls in front of him. "We've been moving non-stop since day one, it feels like. Even with the break I took to go find Emeralds, it devolved into work. Fun work, granted, but work all the same."

"Don't you get tired of it? Even after a six thousand year break, I'm personally sick of all the stupid crap fate's throwing at me and Saito. But, thus is the life of a void mage's familiar."

"Yeah, I get that, too. Thankfully, our world's pretty calm, if you exclude Dr. Eggman's practically pre-scheduled invasions. Those never really get that destructive any more, though, since everyone's gotten so used to it."

Derflinger laughed. "Who announces an invasion ahead of time? Sounds like a cocky idiot to me."

"In some ways," Tails conceded, grinning as memories flooded his mind. "Hey, can you do me a favor and check on Ring?"

"Don't bother. That lazy little kid's probably watching us now but too lazy to get down here. Even if he's up for hauling his ass down here, it's only been a day, so I doubt he'd have the strength. Even I'd need a couple days after a spell like that."

"Is Ring really a kid? He sure doesn't sound like it."

"Well, you gotta keep in mind, I'm the oldest. Then some of Ring's brothers, then Ring as the youngest."

"So, like, how did you come about? Did someone create you, like a robot or golem or something?"

"Yeah. Back in the day, I was made by an elf named Sasha, the familiar of Brimir."

By now, Tails was totally confused. "Wait, isn't Brimir a god you guys worship?" he asked, his eyes wandering back to the seascape below. A yellowish line of sand split the sea from the horizon far in the distance, catching his attention.

"Nah. He was real flesh and blood, six thousand years ago. He was the first Void mage, and the father of all magic here in Halkeginia," Derflinger explained. "The Elves had magic first, but Brimir's blew them outta the water by a mile."

"So what happened to him?"

"Oh, ya know, I sorta killed him. Rather, Sasha the elf got pissed at Brimir when he nearly started an entire genocide plot against the elvish race and used me to stab him. Typical Sunday school story kind of stuff,” Ring said. Tails glanced down at the sentient sword with a raised eyebrow, but let him continue. “…but, I like to take credit for it whenever someone asks. Saying 'I killed their god', people's reactions are priceless."

"So, this guy Brimir wasn't a god at all. Just some super talented dude that could use Chaos powers?"

"Yeah, more or less if that's what you call Void magic. Don't get me wrong, the kid was the real deal. Flattening cities like nothing, teleportation across the world, stuff that was leagues ahead of any other magician. He got so good that the Elves call him the Devil. Which is why they despise humans and want all of the Void Mages and their familiars dead, by the way."

"Because the humans worship Brimir?"

"Bingo. Void mages are direct descendants of Brimir, and inherit some fraction of his power."

"But I thought you said Brimir died a kid just now? How did he…"

"Having powers like he did tends to win the ladies over. So does holding entire cities at ransom for shits and giggles, if you're more into his mindset."

Tails shook his head at the thought, but quickly snapped to attention as a faint beeping rang out front his headset that slowly intesified. He switched the Tornado's main display over to the aerial radar software, watching as a large cluster of green dots grew closer to his location.

"Crap, targets coming up on our ten," he thought, reaching to his headset to turn it on and regain connection with professor Colbert. As soon as the radio static cleared, Colbert's voice blared in Tails' ears as he belted out commands to his crew. "Professor Colbert, you see them?" the fox asked.

"Yes, Miles. They're-"

"Four distinct targets, closing from the southeast, roughly two hundred miles an hour. I know. Do they see us?"

"Uhhm… Most likely! They're on an intercept course with us. I'm putting the Ostland to maximum speed, in an attempt to outrun them."

Tails looked over to the Ostland's control deck and gave a thumbs-up, nudging the Tornado's throttle ever so slightly forward to match the Ostland's acceleration. "I'll stay just alongside you to help in case they attack."

"No! Whatever happens, we mustn't attack at all costs. That would be disastrous for Her Majesty’s reputation."

"So you're just going to wave a white flag if they catch you?! What about Louise? Surely they'll take her?"

"We'll hide her as best as we can, and defend her if we must. If they catch up… just go ahead and go to the capitol. We'll be fine, I'm sure."

"Alright," Tails sighed. "As soon as the ships get close enough, I'll dart out while the Ostland blocks their view. They won't punish you if I run if they can't see me."

"Right. I'm going to drop altitude to gain some speed. We're currently facing directly toward the capitol, within some degree of error. Keep flying forward, once you pass us."

"Will do."

Nudging the nose of the craft down with the stick, the Tornado accompanied the Ostland in its gentle descent. Tails watched the speedometer as the Tornado's airspeed slowly climbed, adjusting the jet's throttle with a silk touch to keep from overtaking the larger airship. The green blips on the radar screen grew closer and closer, gradually coming into line behind the Ostland.

Watching over his shoulder, Tails waited until the first sign of the enemy aircraft appeared around the wooden hull of the Ostland before slamming the throttle forward. The Tornado shot forward like an arrow, pressing the fox into his seat as he overtook the Ostland and maneuvered in front of it, concealing his escape from the enemy. "I hope Colbert's right, or we could end up in the middle nowhere. Saito and Lèo better be alive, I swear…"

* * *

 

Touching down in the central of a massive desert-encompassed citadel not too far from the oasis, Vitartial dismounted his dragon and looked around at the familiar sights. Lèontine hopped down from Lucitania's mount, joining Saito and Tiffania on the ground under Ari's harsh gaze. "Jeez, lighten up, would ya?" she remarked, watching the elf-boy's scowl go unchanged. "You'll kill yourself being so mad all the time."

"I'm not mad. Just prepared," he replied, locking eyes with the rhyme dragon.

"Whatever makes you happy. Or not, I suppose," she said with a shrug, turning to Lucitania. "So, what next?"

"Well, we check on the Council and see if they're ready to receive them," the elf girl replied, nodding across the courtyard where the five had landed. A large, five story building with a rounded dome top made of marble stood at the far end of the square, guarded by several sentries on each corner and at its main doors. "They're in session, but there's no clue if they've got every member at the ready. We can just walk in and take a seat until they're ready to talk to us, I suppose."

The group made their way over to the building with Vitartial and Lucitania at the head, while Ari took the rear to keep a close eye on Saito and Tiffania. Recognizing Vitartial, the guards stationed at the entrance to the marble building stood down and allowed the group to pass. Inside the sprawling hall, several layers of balconies lined the massive room to provide thousands of seats in a U-shaped seating arrangement around a central stage and podium encompassed within another U-shaped desk with several chairs. Nearly every seat was filled with elves, dressed in similar yet differently colored outfits that seperated them into color groups across the room. The massive crowd went silent as Vitartial and Lucitania led the group up the central aisle to an empty bank of seats, the withering intensity of the thousands of eyes making even Lèontine nervous.

"Please, do go back to your discussions," Vitartial announced, his voice rebounding across the walls of the massive hall in a slight echo. "We had no intention of disrupting your debate."

As Vitartial and the others took their seat, a wave of murmuring rolled across the crowd and enveloped the room in a dull roar. Suddenly, a door at the back of the central stage opened, hushing the crowd immediately. Seven extremely old-looking elves stepped out onto the stage and took their seat at the desk. The oldest elf, seated in the middle of the desk, picked up an ornate wooden mallet and slammed it against a small metal cup on the desk, the crack of wood on metal puncturing the dead silence. "The Council will resume session!" the man croaked, his voice weak with age. "We will be putting our previous discussion on pause in order to address an urgent topic today. We must determine the fates of the Devil's bloodline before us!" The elderly man gestured toward Saito and Tiffania with his mallet. "Life?... Or death?"


	109. Season 4 Chapter 26

**SEASON 4 CHAPTER 26**

The audience behind Lèontine erupted into a cacophony of yelling, with cries of "Life!" and "Death to the Devil's Worshippers!" interspersed between heated debate and stray curses. The old man at the front of the room brought the gavel down with a solid, earsplitting crack that brought the room to order. "There are those among us who support our original plan, to euthanize the Devil's worshippers in an attempt to prevent the prophecy from being fulfilled. However, seeing that one of them is one of our own, there are those who wish to prevent this."

Another one of the elderly men, seated at the far left edge of the curved desk in a red outfit, raised his hand to capture the crowd's attention. "We have, as your representatives, taken a general consensus of our respective groups after the previous individual-voter ballot resulted in a tie," he called. "As your representatives, we will be voting on your behalf in order to prevent such an event from reoccurring. Is there any party that significantly disagrees with this approach?"

The room sat silent for a time. Lèontine turned around to take a look at the crowd, noticing very few hands being raised among the seven defined colorgroups. "Well, at least they agree on something," she thought.

"Very well!" the elder with the gavel announced. "We will, for the sake of summary, allow each of the representing elders to voice their group's decision and reasoning. Beginning with the Warrior guild and rotating clockwise around the table, please." The mallet-wielding elder gestured to the red-clad elf and set the gavel aside.

"Very well!" the man said, standing up and turning to face the crowd. "The Warrior guild has decided to go forward with the execution of both subjects."

At this, a murmur among the other colors of elves began to rise, but the red-clad elder raised his hand to put a silence to it. "While they believe that the death of the human Familiar is universally agreed on, they also believe that, and I quote, 'saving a half-bred freak isn't worth risking the destruction of the world'."

"THAT'S BULLSHIT!" Saito yelled, flying out of his seat in a rage that startled Tiffania. "Tiffania's only half-elf, but she's a better person than any of you pointy-eared, self-entitled assholes could ever be!"

Several guards seated at the edge of the room rushed forward to restrain Saito as he stepped out into the aisle and began to make his way forward, surrounding him with oustretched spears. Saito stepped forward toward the closest guard and grabbed his spear by the shaft just below the blade, grimacing as the back edge of the blade cut into his hand. He brought his other hand crashing down on the wooden shaft of the spear with his Gandalfr rune-fueled strength, snapping the wooden shaft like a twig. One of the guards came in from behind and kicked out the boy's knees, forcing him to the ground to detain him.

"As you can see, there are violent tendancies among humans that must be quelled, especially among one so crucial to the Prophecy," the red-clad elder continued, eyeing the Japanese boy with disdain. "The impure girl will ultimately be no different, as is the duty of the bearer of the Devil's powers."

"You ignorant jerk!" Saito yelled, throwing the spear fragment he held at the red-clad man. The spearhead landed just short, embedding itself in the end of the desk.

The old man in red chuckled to himself as he bent over to dislodge the spearhead. "That's a mahogany desk, young man. Worth more than your life," he said, smirking. "Not that you have much of one left, having assaulted a Council elder. Take him to the cells below until the vote is cast."

Seething with rage, Saito withheld further resistance as the guards lifted him to his feet and shoved him toward the far left end of the hall where two sentries waited, holding a set of doors open. When the commotion had settled, the red-clad elder bowed and took his seat, still wearing his sly grin in pride.

As the rest of the elders took turns to declare their votes, Lèontine watched as Tiffania slowly broke down, resting her head in her hands. Tears slowly ran down her arm, catching Lèontine's attention. She moved over a seat and sat down next to the elf girl, wrapping an arm around her shoulder and pulling her close as she cried. By the end of it all, only one of the seven elders had voted to forego the execution; the six concurring elders all agreed on the same logic, supported by Saito's outburst.

With the discussion coming to a close, the central elder picked up his gavel and tapped it twice in the metal cup. "This discussion is at a close. The Devil's bloodline must be eradicated. The boy and the half-elf girl shall be executed this evening. The Council is adjourned for a one-hour break until further issues may be discussed."

As the thousands of elves began to rise, more guards descended upon Tiffania's position. Ari stood up from his seat and moved past Vitartial, stopping at Tiffania's side. "Get up," he ordered.

Lèontine looked up at Ari with an electric stare. "Back the fuck off," she mouthed, rubbing Tiffania's shoulder to get her attention. "Come on. It'll be fine, I'm sure the others are coming to get you out," she whispered, covering her mouth to keep the guards from overhearing.

Nodding, Tiffania wiped her eyes with the back of her hand and stood up, stepping out into the aisles to be detained. As Lèontine stepped out to join her, the guards crossed their spears to hold her back. "We only need her. Go back with your master."

"She's not my master, fuckwad, and you better believe I'm coming with her or I'll rip your spine out from your neck down and beat your friends to death with it," Lèontine spat, the corner of her mouth twitching with fury.

As the guard opened his mouth to object, Lucitania stepped forward and waved the man off. "It's fine, she's with us. We'll keep her controlled so she can say her farewells," she explained. "But I wouldn't doubt her capability, so don't make her any angrier, please."

Silently watching for any signs of abuse from the armor-clad elves, Lèontine followed behind the guards as the group made their way through the same doors Saito had disappeared through, accompanied by Vitartial and Ari in the rear. A large stone stairwell spiraled into the ground, forcing her to pause mid-stride as a sudden fear gripped her. "Fuckit," she muttered, wiping a bead of sweat from her forehead and wringing her hands before taking off down the stairs after the rest of the group that had pushed past her.

Deep underground, the stairwell ended in a solitary hallway, dimly lit with magical torches and lined with jail cells on either side. Criminals that filled the cells catcalled Tiffania and Lèontine as they passed, filling Lèontine with disgust. "Probably the first time they've seen a woman in years, I'd imagine," she thought, noting the age of some of the criminals as they progressed down the hall. Finally, as the cells began to become less sparsely populated deep into the prison, the guards came to a halt in front of a plate-steel door and unbolted the heavy lock mechanism with a massive key. They waited for a moment as the door glowed bright green, hesitating to open the door until the light subsided. "The key disables the magic. No surprise," she thought, noting the key's shape and size as best she could. "Perhaps we can bribe an elf into undoing that."

As soon as the door opened, Tiffania rushed inside, followed by Lèontine as the guards moved to seal the door. Saito stood up to welcome his friend, only to be caught head-on as Tiffania embraced him, wrapping him in a bear hug.

"What'd they do to her?" Saito asked, his anger rising once more.

"They just all railed on her for being half-elf a bunch, same as what you saw," Lèontine replied.

"I swear, as soon as I get Derflinger back…"

"Saito!" Tiffania cried, getting up and wiping her face one last time. "Thank you for everything back there…"

Saito blushed, looking away as Tiffania bowed in thanks. "It was nothing, don't worry about it."

"No, it wasn't nothing! You risked your life for me," she replied, standing up straight. Without warning, she reached forward and took Saito's head in her hands, pulling him forward to kiss him. The boy's body grew bright red, letting off a mysterious steam that caused Tiffania to back off in a panic. Saito fell to the ground, clutching his chest as if his heart were in pain. Within moments, the heat and vapor subsided as quickly as they had come on.

"Well, looks like you got that out of the way," Lèontine said, giving Tiffania a thumbs-up. "He's all yours, now."

"Wait, Tiffa… did you just…?" Saito asked, climbing to his feet.

"Yeah, she sealed a contract with you. She told me that she thought she'd summoned you back in Romalia, but she wasn't sure. That just made it official," Lèontine explained.

Suddenly, a loud clatter filled the room as something slammed against the cell door, shaking it violently. With a loud screech of metal on metal, the door swung open once more, revealing Vitartial holding the metal key. Ari and Lucitania stood behind him, surrounded by several of the guards sprawled out on the floor. "I believe your jail time is up, and your sentence served. If you'll come with me, please."

* * *

 

As the Tornado hurtled through the air, Tails could make out a citadel rising above the horizon in the distance. "That's gotta be it," he thought, gently adjusting the course of the speeding craft toward the white blob. He brought the thrusters down to a minimum and deployed the flaps and airbrakes to bring the Tornado to a slow cruise over the city as he searched for a place to land. Spotting a large courtyard, he switched the Tornado to Walker mode and brought the craft to a hovering descent over the stone square. Below him, people began filtering out of one of the large buildings adjacent to the square, making their way across the square. The crowd parted as the Tornado touched down, giving the craft a wide berth as many began to circle around it, watching in awe.

Wasting no time, Tails popped the canopy and reached back over his seat, grabbing the three Panzerfäuste out of the backpack and hopping out of the craft. "Hey, where's a chief I can speak to? It's urgent," he called, looking around at the crowd.

A blue-clad elf stepped forward, nodding toward the building the crowd had just come out of. "The elders are probably still in the Council hall if you-"

Suddenly, a group of armed guards burst out of the building the blue-clad elf had just gestured to. "EVERYONE INSIDE! THE PRISONERS ESCAPED!" a guard yelled at the top of his lungs, beckoning toward the hall's entrance.

"You gotta be kidding me," Tails thought to himself, shaking his head. "Fifty gold coins says that's Saito flying solo on some half-baked escape plan."

A wave of panic spread among the thousands of elves as they scrabbled for the door. As Tails tried to mingle with the crowd, he felt a rough hand on his shoulder pull him back. "Council members only. Go find shelter elsewhere, beast," a guard said, shoving Tails aside. The fox waited patiently outside as the last of the elves made it into the hall, followed by the guards as they slammed the massive double doors shut and barricaded them from the inside, the sound of the cross-bar slamming into place audible through the thick metal-reinforced wood.

"Well, if that's how it's gonna be," Tails thought, shifting one Panzerfaust from his left arm to his right, "then we'll play hardball."

Inspecting the launcher, he tucked the tube under his arm and held the other end up with his hand. "It's just as easy as pressing down this tab thing, according to the booklet that was left in the box," he reminded himself, wrapping his thumb around the tube to the metal trigger that poked up behind the crude iron sights. A quick squeeze of the trigger, and the bulbous metal warhead sailed through the air with a muffled roar of burning propellant.

On impact, the warhead exploded violently, smashing a massive hole in the center of the two doors where the cross-bar had been and blowing them wide open. Grinning, Tails dropped the spent tube and took his two remaining Panzerfausts, one under each arm, and walked into the massive hall, greeted by the thousands of horrified elves. "Alright. Where are they?" he asked.

"Who are you?" an old man dressed in red at the front of the room asked.

"None of your business. Just answer the question, or…" Tails replied, nodding back at the door.

"They've escaped."

Tails rolled his eyes. "As if I didn't know that after the big announcement. Answer the damn question."

The red-clad elf gave him a curious look. "Well, how the bloody hell should I know? Escapees don't stay in their cells."

"Fine. I'm going to find them. Don't leave the room, or I'll be back. Don't kill them, or I'll be back, and very, very mad. Got it?" the fox asked, receiving a vigorous nod from the old man. Tails slowly backed out of the room, keeping the two Panzerfäuste leveled at the closest target to keep them from approaching. "Oh, and get this door fixed so I can knock it down again!" he called into the room with a grin, turning to dart back to the Tornado and get airborne once more.


	110. Season 4 Chapter 27

**SEASON 4 CHAPTER 27**

"Do you guys even know where we're going?" Saito called, out of breath from the several minutes of frenzied running and fighting amongst the large sewer tunnels below the citadel. He struggled to adjust the sheath for the elvish saber he'd been given as he ran, tightening it down another notch to keep it from slamming against his waist so much.

"Just keep going," Vitartial replied, sprinting effortlessly at the head of the group. "There's an exit about another mile away, assuming they don't lower the sewer gates."

"And if they do?" Lèontine asked.

"We'll get to that bridge when we cross it."

Suddenly, a muffled boom echoed down the stone-walled tunnels, bringing the group to a halt. "What the hell was that?!" Ari exclaimed, peering into the darkness behind them.

Lucitania shrugged. "It sounded like it came from the Council's meeting hall."

"If the Council's in danger, we gotta go back and help them!" the elf boy replied. As the echo of the explosion died away, the sound of rushing footsteps filled its place in the eerie silence of the tunnels. "…On second thought, running might still be a good idea."

Out of a side-tunnel just ahead, a group of armed guards came tearing around the corner, pikes leveled for a charge. As Lèontine and Saito stepped forward to fight them, Vitartial held them back with a wave of his hand, following through with an odd hand motion. Without warning, the guards were swiftly knocked into the dirty water as a new wall of stone erupted out of the existing wall, receding as quickly as it had appeared. The group sprinted past the fallen guards before they could climb to safety, weaving their way through the maze of waterways and side-paths.

It didn't take long for more guards to join in the chase, tailing Saito and the others by only a few feet at best. Vitartial led the group into another side alley, only to be confronted by a heavy locked door "Well, that wasn't supposed to be locked," the elf mumbled to himself.

"So we'll break it down, right?" Saito offered.

"No, it's guarded with magic as usual," Lèontine stated. "Trying to attack it would be suicide."

The guards giving chase rounded the corner, pinning Saito's group between the door and themselves. Vitartial raised his his hand once more, sealing the hallway with a stone wall that cut the guards off from their advance. "Now we have some time to think."

"Well, Tiffania here could help, if she can use Dispel," Lèontine offered. Everyone looked to Tiffania, making her visibly nervous. "Well… I'll do my best," she said. The elf girl closed her eyes and bowed her head, beginning to chant in a low murmur.

Out of the corner of her eye, Lucitania noticed a blue light appear on the wall Vitartial had created. As the circle of light grew, an image faded into view, showing a pink-haired girl sitting on a bed in a wooden room, holding an ornate book. In the background the guards on the other side of the wall began pounding against the slab of rock, trying to break their way through. The pink-haired girl's eyes flew wide as she threw herself off the bed and through the portal, hugging Saito and catching him by surprise.

"What the… Louise!?" he exclaimed with joy, returning the hug. "Tiffania, stop! We're free!"

Tiffania stopped chanting, raising her head and looking to Saito and Louise with a mix of surprise and defeat. As the guards continued to pound at the stone wall, a crack in the wall began to form. "Well, let's get going then," Vitartial offered, walking over to the portal and stepping through. As the crack began to widen, the others proceeded through the portal, stepping into Louise's room on the Ostland. As the wall gave way, the portal flashed out of existence, leaving behind nothing but an empty room for the confused guards.

* * *

 

"Dangit, where are they," Tails muttered as he ran through the streets, looking for any signs of life among the barren streets. "Everyone must've gone into lockdown or something. This place's a ghost town!"

"Well, if the elves are anything besides assholes, they're efficient, in theory," Derflinger said. "They put the Germanians to shame in that regard. You need something done, you get an elf. Even Joseph knew that, clearly."

Tails nodded. "A legislative council that big takes a lot of discipline. Even the one on Mobius isn't that big. Dang, where can they be?"

In the distance, the roar of the Ostland's propellers grew louder and louder as it approached the city, the elvish ships right on it's tail. "Crap, I didn't think they'd be here that fast!" Tails thought to himself. He spun around and ignited his rocket shoes, skating off toward the council hall. "Maybe they can tell me something new."

Within minutes, he slid to a halt in front of the white hall once more. The door still stood wide open, with guards lining the entrance with pikes raised in a defensive stance. Raising his two Panzerfäuste, Tails pushed his way through the guards, making his way to the center of the hall. "Any news on my friends?" he called out.

An elder clad in green spoke out, unusually calm. "We've located your friends. Or rather, confirmed their escape from the city. Which only leaves us with one little problem… You."

"Oh, I don't think I'll be any more of a problem," Tails replied, watching the guards as they closed in on him. "I was just about to leave."

One of the guards rushed in from behind, pike raised. Tails sidestepped the man's charge, tripping him with his tails. Guards began to swarm in around him, sprinting down the aisles of seats from all directions with pikes and sabers at the ready. Seeing no way out, Tails leaped into the air and hovered clear over their heads toward the door. As he sprinted for the door, a wall of stone rose from the ground, shearing the doors off their hinges as the wall took their place.

"Huh, just what I asked for!" Tails exclaimed with a grin. As the group of guards closed in on him, Tails raised his two Panzerfäuste and pointed them at the new stone wall, unleashing both explosive warheads simultaneously. The backblast of the launchers knocked the closest oncoming guards to their feet as the warheads impacted the stone, blowing a three-foot-wide hole open. Before the elves could recover and seal the hole, Tails took to the air and dashed through, landing on the other side and sprinting to his Tornado. He tossed the two spent launcher tubes aside as he scrambled up into the pilot's seat, booting up the craft. As the canopy latched shut, the stone wall he'd punched through sunk back into the ground, allowing the guards to flow out into the square en masse. Tails jammed the throttle to full, sending the craft flying into the air after the Ostland, leaving the white desert citadel in his dust.

* * *

 

Within minutes, the X Tornado had caught up to the Ostland, tailing the two elvish airships that were giving chase all this time. Tails slipped his headset back on and double-checked the frequency.

"Professor Colbert, you there? What's going on?"

A short hiss of static roared in his ears, followed by silence. Finally, Colbert's voice began to clip in and out, the enemy airships positioning causing slight interference. "Miles, is that you? Where are you? We can't outrun them any more, or we won't have enough fuel to get back to Romalia. Also… we have a few additional guests. Saito, Miss Lèontine, and Miss Tiffania are onboard, as well as three elves."

"Care to explain how?"

"I can't quite say… Miss Louise was studying the Founder's Prayerbook she received in Romalia. It must've been some spell she learned from there."

Tails nodded. "So what's the plan now?"

"Well… One moment," Colbert replied. Tails could hear some faint chatter over the radio, away from the microphone. A few seconds later, the professor came back on comms. "The elf here wants us to land. He thinks he can talk to the guards and dismiss them. He says he knows you. Should we trust him?"

"…Yeah, go for it," the Mobian replied. "I'm pulling around the elvish ships to land next to you guys. I'll stay in the Tornado once we land, in case they try anything stupid." He pulled out from behind the twin elvish aircrafts and nudged the throttle forward, slowly pushing past them to come alongside the Ostland. The four aircraft slowly descended to the ground below, landing on the flattest stretch of desert sand they could find. As soon as the group of airships touched down, Tails could see armed guards streaming out of the elvish ships, moving to surround the Ostland and the Tornado. The loading door swung down on its chains, revealing Vitartial and Colbert waiting at the top, with several of the student crew behind them. The guards swarmed up the ramp without bothering to gain permission, only to be halted by Vitartial.

"Huh, must have some serious authority," Tails remarked as he watched all but the captain of the guard unit get down on one knee. One of the guards beckoned for Tails to come outside, but he refused with a shake of his head. Over by the Ostland, Vitartial had just finished his short chat with the guard captain, following in the slow retreat of the enemy soldiers. Tails hopped out of the Tornado once the guards had left, jogging over to the waiting airship.

"Ah, it's you. Miles, correct?" Vitartial asked in greeting. Before Tails could respond, the elf cut him off with a wave of his hand. "I found your real name after some research. I presume you paid a visit to our home city?"

Tails scratched the back of his ear, feigning embarrassment to cover his moment of pride. "Yeah. Sorta held the city Council hostage for a while, trying to find Lèontine and Saito. Didn't expect you to be helping them escape, that's for sure."

"Consider it a stepping stone to a proper apology. Although I couldn't avoid helping Joseph, I know what harm he did to you and your friends by my work."

"Well, I'm not sure if my friends would be alive right now without you. I really appreciate it. So, what next?" the fox asked, turning to Colbert.

"Well, I suppose the first order of business is to return Mr. Vitartial and the other elves to some safe location," the bald magician said. "Then, we head back to report our success to the Queen, as Saito asked."

Tails nodded. "Well, I don't know when Tabitha's coronation is, so I think I'll swing by Gallia and check in on her. If she's okay with it, I'll come back to the Academy to let you guys know when to fly over. Where's Lèontine?"

"Right here!" he could hear her call. She worked her way through the students surrounding Colbert out onto the loading ramp, giving him a friendly hug. "Good to see you didn't get yourself killed."

Everyone suddenly broke out into laughter, confusing Lèontine. "It took the entire Albian army to stop him last time. What could a handful of guards do?" Vitartial explained, he himself chuckling a little.

"I'll tell the story another time, Lèo," Tails said, walking down the loading ramp. "Let's get going. If we're lucky, we won't miss the coronation." Lèontine quickly caught up as he walked over to the Tornado, helping her up before climbing into the Tornado himself and sealing the cockpit. The turbines roared to life as he slowly brought the throttle up, propelling the craft into the air. Within minutes, they were on their way to Gallia.


	111. Season 4 Chapter 28

**SEASON 4 CHAPTER 28**

Tails paced the floor of his room, simultaneously bored and mildly agitated. Despite being only moments away from the beginning of Tabitha's coronation, something had been bothering him for nearly the entire three days he'd been waiting, and still bothered him now.

Lèontine watched with amusement as Tails slowly marched up and down the length of the room deep in thought, taking in every detail of his concerned face. "You know, it's probably some custom or other that she can't see you. Not that she doesn't want to," she said.

"I know, it's just…" Tails groaned impatiently. "I mean, she's the queen! Or, about to be, at least. Why couldn't she just say the word and make it so, if she's the leader around here! I think something's going on, something's wrong an-"

"Calm down, Tails, you're over-reacting," Lèontine stated, the amusement in her voice suddenly replaced by a much more serious, yet motherly tone. "If you don't stop worrying, you're going to end up doing something stupid and crashing the whole party. Trust me, no one will be congratulating you for that."

"Yeah, yeah, I know," he sighed, flopping down on his bed. "Still bugs me, though."

"I never said it wouldn't. Anyway, I'm going to get changed, to freshen up a little bit. Are you going to wear that suit you wore when you were given your title?"

Tails sat up for a moment to cast a glance over at the black suit where it lay folded over the back of a desk chair near the door. "Yeah, I guess…" he mumbled half-heartedly. Even the moment he set foot at the Academy to pick it up before coming to Gallia, he seriously considered not bringing it. Only second thought made him decide otherwise, and it wasn't something he looked forward to. "Hey, if it makes you feel any better, you look fantastic in it," Lèontine had said as he loaded it into the Tornado on top of her spare clothes. Although he didn't doubt that he would look "like a million bucks" as Sonic would have said, he knew he'd feel like a shag carpet under a steam cleaner by the time he was leaving the ceremony.

He waited patiently while Lèontine changed, taking in every detail of the ornate gold-inlaid wallpaper as the artwork stretched from floor to ceiling by his bed. When she finished donning her navy blue dress, he hopped up from his bed and walked over to the chair. Three minutes of donning his suit, cloak and twelve minutes of struggling to make a neat bow tie later, three loud cracks of the metal door knocker rang out from the door. Tails finished the last adjustment on his tie before answering the door, finding himself face to face with a tall, burly guard.

"The coronation for Her Majesty will begin in ten minutes. Please be in the throne room by that time," the man relayed. Before Tails could even ask a question, he hurried along his way to the next guestroom down the hall to relay the instructions once more.

"Well, we can just find it ourselves," Lèontine said, brushing past Tails as she stepped out of the room. Tails shut the door behind him and followed her out into the hall, strolling through several open-air courtyards. A cool breeze from the city's several rivers filled the air, combatting the oven-like effect of Tails' suit as he walked.

"I love the architecture of this place. It hasn't changed much at all since I first came through these parts so long ago," Lèontine remarked, looking at the rooftop decorations high above.

Tails nodded in agreement. "Yeah, this place is pretty cool! One of the castle workers took me on a little tour, showing me all the historical stuff about the town. This city, Lutèce, has a pretty long history, even before the Gallians were here apparently."

The two walked for a few minutes around the massive palace until they ran into a stream of attendees, shuffling their way through the halls to the throne room in the center of the compound. Tails and Lèontine merged into the group, making their way into the massive stone throneroom illuminated by dome-like stained glass skylights and hundreds of magic candles. At the head of the room, a glimmering gold-plated throne awaited on a raised section of stone, its rich blue silk velvet contrasting with the bright metal. The two worked their way to the front of the seating areas, taking a front-row seat beside a group of knights adorned in decorative armor. Noticing the fox's cloak, the knights smiled and nodded in recognition of his title.

Tails looked around the cavernous throne room. In one of the upper balcony sections on the second floor, Tails could see a group of students from Tristain take their seats. Kirche and Louise were easy to spot out of the crowd, with their unusual hair colors and Saito's signature blue hoodie in close proximity. "I never even thought of it as weird, but I'm pretty sure only Tabitha, Louise, Kirche, and Gimli are the only other students with colored hair. I wonder why…" he pondered, turning to face the front of the room.

As the few remaining visitors filtered into the room, the main doors slammed shut. The crowd suddenly stood to attention, spurring Tails to launch to his feet in response. From a small side-door behind the throne, a small army of retainers and petal-bearers gracefully filled the front of the room around the throne, preparing the space with petals and lit candles. When this was finished, an elderly man in gold and white robes took the front of the stage.

"We thank you for coming this afternoon. It is an honor and a pleasure to re-introduce the true bloodline of the Gallian royal family to our nation. I present to you, Princess Charlotte!"

Behind him, Tails could hear the large main doors open once more. He turned to see Tabitha standing in the doorway, accompanied by several more petal-bearers that rushed ahead of her to prepare the aisle. She was dressed in a magnificent ocean-blue dress, with several sky-blue frills running diagonally down the length of the dress from the shoulders to the hem. A large collar with four petal-like designs surrounded her head, presenting her face like the center of a beautiful flower. Tails' jaw nearly dropped, if it weren't that he'd caught himself to keep from looking like an idiot in the crowd of important people.

"Not bad, for a fifteen-year-old," Lèontine remarked. "It almost makes her look older, more like the Queen she is."

"Well… Of course! She's perfect," Tails said, covering up his embarassment by breaking his gaze away from her. "She'll make a fine queen."

Tabitha proceeded down the aisle, the end of her curled-tip wooden staff clacking against the polished marble floor. Tails watched her from the corner of his eye as she passed, a sense of giddy excitement building as she stepped closer to the throne. She slowly ascended the few steps onto the raised platform, stopping beside the announcer that had declared her presence. With a short nod from the announcer, two more attendants were sent forward from the door behind the throne, one carrying a scroll and the other a plush pillow that supported an ornate, gem-dotted crown.

"We gather here today to recognize the crowning of Her Royal Highness, Charlotte Hélène d'Orléans de Gallia, as the successor of her late uncle, Joseph Fracois d'Lutèce de Gallia, to the throne of our nation!" the announcer declared. "Princess Charlotte, do you accept this invitation?" he added, turning to face Tabitha. With a brief nod from the blue-haired girl, the scroll-bearing attendant stepped forward and presented her the scroll, fully extended for her to read. Briefly scanning the document, Tabitha gave her staff a short wave. A light emanated from the bottom of the parchment, signalling the attendant to turn around and show the magically-inscribed signature to the crowd.

"As you can see, Princess Charlotte has signed the declaration of her ascension to the throne!" the announcer stated. "Crown-bearer, if you will."

The man bearing the crown darted over to the announcer and took to one knee, holding the crown aloft on its pillow. With great delicacy, the announcer plucked the crown off of the pillow and gently set it upon Tabitha's motionless head, backing away slowly. Suddenly, the crowd burst into a roaring applause, cheering and whistling as Tabitha took a seat upon the throne, looking around the room at her new subjects. Tails, grinning from ear to ear, launched to his feet as the crowd began to rise and added his own clapping to the deafening final crescendo of applause.

Tabitha held her staff aloft, silencing the crowd with uncanny precision. She looked over at the announcer and nodded, allowing him to continue with his final announcements. "While there are many new duties that Queen Charlotte must attend to, hors 'd ouvres will be offered in the front gardens on your way out. Please feel welcome to stay as long as you like. That will be all."

Around the room, the crowds began to make their way to the nearest doors, slowly filtering their way out into the halls. The guards sitting next to Tails and Lèontine, however, stood up in unison and made their way over to the base of Tabitha's throne platfoorm and took a knee. Over the din of the retreating guests, Tails could hear the guards taking their turns to individually swear the allegiance to Tabitha, laying their swords out in front of them one by one. "Well, at least she'll be in good hands," Tails silently remarked, watching the display with curiosity.

When the guards finally retreated, Tails and Lèontine stepped up to the throne, looking up at Tabitha. "Hey, Tabitha! Congratulations!" he said, stepping up the stairs of the throne platform. The announcer attendant began to protest, but Tabitha quickly shut him down with an upraised hand. "Thank you, Miles," she said, her soft voice filling his ears.

Suddenly, alarm bells were going off in his head as the details slowly began to piece together. "Hey, I'm just glad you made the right choice. I think you'll make a great Queen," the fox said, bowing toward her. "Anyway, I was wondering if you want me to stay here, or head back to the Academy?"

"If you can, stay," she replied.

"Will do! Anway, if you need me for anything, I'll be in my room," Tails replied. With a final bow, he stepped down from the platform alongside Lèontine and promptly exited the room, making his way through the halls to his room. "Lèo, please tell me you got all of that," he muttered to her, his pace increasing as he walked.

"Got all of what?" she asked, genuinely puzzled.

"…I don't know. Signals. There were a lot of things that felt off about her."

Lèontine laughed. "Oh, shut up! You're still over-reacting like a little kid."

"No, seriously! Recall her face. Did you notice anything different?" Tails said. Tabitha's face filled his mind, recalling each detail as best he could. Aside from a slight bit of makeup, all of the details seemed the same between how he remembered her, and how he saw her; the face, the hair, the mouth, the eyes. "No glasses. That was it!"

"So? They probably wanted her to look good and decided against glasses for the ceremony. Not a big deal."

Tails nodded. "Possibly. But, as far as I can tell, she's almost always been wearing those glasses, especially when reading. I think she's farsighted. So how did she read that document without them?"

"Maybe she's actually nearsighted and just leaves her glasses on all the time," Lèontine explained, rolling her eyes. "Maybe she didn't actually read the document, and just pretended to. Who cares?"

"Okay, then why did she call me Miles and not Tails? She's always called me Tails, right?" he asked.

"Oh, give up already!" she replied, exasperated. "Probably just being formal, or something!"

"But the attendants wouldn't have known whether Miles or Tails was my real name. Both would have sounded just as formal…"

The tail-end of the crowd of attendees not too far head of Tails and Lèontine suddenly parted, revealing three men sprinting down the hallway toward the throne room. As they brushed past Tails, he caught sight of one of the men's pointed ears sticking out from under the brim of his wide hat. He turned to rush after the men, bursting into the throne room only moments behind them, with Lèo hot on his tails. The elves rushed to the front of the room, pausing to take to one knee out of respect at the base of her throne's platform. "Your majesty, we bear urgent news that needs your attention," one of the elves said. "The Prophecy we believe in concerning what you call 'void mages' is coming true. Our homeland is under attack, and the threat is making its way toward northern Halkeginia. We intercepted messengers from Romalia to deliver the message to Vittorio a day ago, so he should be here soon."

Tabitha nodded and stood up from her throne. "To the planning room."


	112. Season 4 Chapter 29

Standing around a large table in a windowless, stone-walled room behind the throne room, the elf messengers and Tabitha’s advisors were hard at work plotting out enemy movement on a large map of Halkeginia, with a rough sketch of elvish land to fill in blank sections of the map to the south. Tails watched patiently from the corner of the table as the men tried to piece together the puzzle of the enemy's erratic movement across elvish territory. So far, hardly anything above a mouth-to-ear whisper had been spoken.

"Is it just me, or do you guys have about a tiny fraction of a clue of what you're doing?" Lèontine blurted out, eyeing the markers and arrows the men were placing all over the southern part of the map representing the elvish lands.

"We can't explain it, because we don't know what they are," one of the elves replied tartly, eyeing the brown-haired girl with an annoyed glare. "We've never seen anything like these."

"What do they look like?" Tails asked. "Surely you've seen one."

The elves collectively shook their heads. "We've only heard reports. A large, black floating craft shaped like a shard of stone. Several towns have been wiped off the map, according to traders crossing the deserts. Dark, bipedal creatures that swept through towns like locusts, leaving nothing behind.

As the elves spoke, a sense of gut-wrenching fear gripped Tails. He rushed over to the table, pushing advisors aside to reach the map's edge. "Crap, I should've known there'd be more… he muttered to himself, sweeping aside the markers to clear the map much to the protest of the advisors. "Alright, start from square one. Where have you last seen the ship? What towns have already been wiped? Give me everything you've got."

"Are you with the Queen? How can we trust you?" the youngest elf of the group asked.

"I'm her familiar," Tails replied, solemnly nodding toward Tabitha, "…and I've fought these guys before. These aren't the kind of things you screw around with, using normal tactics."

"Fine," the elf said, pointing toward certain dots on the map. "These are the places they've cleared. Here's where we last saw the airship," he added, putting his finger on a small circle labeled as an oasis.

Piecing together the data, Tails marked out each struck town in relation to the position of the airship. With all of the points plotted, he put his finger on another circle, a labeled city. "This is where they'll strike next," he declared. Looking up, he could see the elves nervously looking back and forth at each other. "That's the capitol, right?" Tails asked.

"Yes. Are you certain of this?" the oldest elf asked hesitantly, the fear in his voice almost palpable.

"I'm one hundred percent confident, unfortunately. Just take a look at the lines," he said, tracing several paths from town to town between the airship and the capitol with his finger. "It's their tactic for reproducing. These are Black Arms, aliens from my world that made it here. Don't ask how, I don't have a clue. Anyway, they eat humans – they probably see elves as no different in that regard. They destroy surrounding towns, eating for themselves and forcing the citizens toward large cities. Once the food is herded up, they drop on the city like a ton of bricks and turn the place into a slaughterhouse to produce food for their larvae. That's what they tried to do the first time we fought them."

"And how did you defeat them before?" one of Tabitha's advisors asked.

"Well, we had a weapon called the Eclipse Cannon," Tails explained, closing his eyes and shaking his head. "A device as big as the moon, built to destroy planets. Before, the Black Arms had a mothership out in space called the Black Comet, where they stored all their larvae off-planet where they couldn't be harmed. We blew that up, along with their leader, then sweeped up the rest of the ground forces. Even with advanced weapons, casualties were huge. They aren't invulnerable to normal weapons, but they're incredibly tough."

A wave of murmuring rolled through the crowd of advisors. Suddenly, the door to the war room slid open, revealing Vittorio and Julio standing in the doorway. "Sorry if we're late! We had some minor interference on our way here. So, how is everyone?"

"How IS everyone?! You psychotic bastard," the middle-aged elf growled. "The world's ending thanks to your bullshit, and you're asking how everyone is? Someone should have your head on a wall-"

"Enough," Tabitha ordered, silencing the room with a single word. "Vittorio, thank you."

"My pleasure, Charlotte," Vittorio said with a slight bow, still smiling all the while. "It seems like there's some hostility in the air. I presume that stupid elvish prophecy has begun? I thought there was yet to be a fourth familiar for Miss Westwood, correct?"

"Uhh, nope," Lèontine butted in. "Saito's pulling double duty. She kissed him while the elves were holding us hostage at an oasis near the capitol."

"Fantastic!" Vittorio replied, rubbing his hands together. "So, what next?"

Tails raised his hand to get the room's attention. "Here's what I would suggest. The three elves head back to the capitol and raise as many airships as they can to evacuate people to somewhere in Halkeginia. We can't guarantee where they'll cross the sea into Halkeginia, unless they try to follow the evacuee ships as bait. What place is the most defensible?"

Julio stepped forward. "Undoubtedly Tristain’s Magic Academy. It was built with defensibility in mind, including magic defenses aside from the perimeter walls. It's also got plenty of fighting space."

"Fine, we'll meet there then," Tails said, nodding. "We'll get everyone inside and set up for an attack. Maybe Headmaster Osmond will let me and Saito break out the weapon cache for some additional support. I've always wanted to spend more time digging through all the stuff he has crammed together down there," he added with a grin.

"What about civilians in Romalia, Tristain, Gallia? What if they don't follow us there, and go for our people instead? How do we defend them?" the advisors clamored over each other, tossing an endless stream of possibilities Tails' way.

"To be honest, I have no idea. There's just about no way we can defend them, if we're to set up in Tristain,” the fox replied. “Tell them to evacuate and head for Germania and northern Tristain, although I doubt they will get very far unless the Black Arms takes their sweet time. We have to find a way to bait them in, but slowly…"

Concerned, Tails pondered for a moment, wracking his brain for every possibility he could think of that didn't involve loss of life. "You know, I just had a thought. What if food isn't their primary objective? At least, not long-term."

"What makes you think that?" Julio asked.

"They're in an airship, right? That airship, if I had to guess, is powered by a Chaos Emerald. At least one, but possibly two, since I have the other five. What if they're eating now to build an army, before they come for the rest of the Emeralds?"

"And why would they want these 'emeralds' you speak of, if they already have enough for their airship?"

Tails sighed. "It's hard to explain, but imagine them as a source of immense power. Not a doomsday weapon in themselves, but a great way to make one work if you had one. You guys heard what happened to the Albion airship fleet when they attacked Tristain a while back? Yeah, that's a fraction of what these things can do with just one or two of them. If I'm right, they want all seven. Maybe to return to my world, maybe to dominate this one. Who knows. Whatever it is, I wouldn't put it past them or whoever or whatever is commanding them to be thinking long term, beyond just eating people."

Without a word, the elves backed away from the table and moved for the door. "We must go, if we are to have a chance of getting anyone out alive. We will be headed for this Academy you speak of as soon as we can," the eldest elf stated. Everyone said their farewells and wished them luck as the three elves stepped out of the room, sealing the door behind them. An eerie silence descended upon the room, as no one dared to ask further questions in fear of the unspoken truth of the battle ahead.

"Well, if the plan's set, I need to get the Tornado back to the Academy, just to be sure," Tails said, stepping back from the table. "All of the Chaos Emeralds I have are in that thing. If I'm right, and they ARE coming for the Emeralds, they'll follow the Tornado. Come on, Lèo, we gotta go." He walked over to the door and pulled it open, letting Lèontine walk through before stepping out of the war room. The two briskly made their way through the halls to their room to let Lèontine collect her clothes while Tails changed out of his tuxedo. Within ten minutes, they were on their way out to a small side courtyard where Tails had parked the X Tornado when they had arrived in Gallia. To their surprise, Tabitha was already waiting patiently beside the craft, dressed in her school outfit once more. Ilococoo was seated on top of the craft, asleep against the glass canopy of the third and fourth seats.

"Dang, that was fast," Tails exclaimed, approaching the craft and climbing up onto the top to toss his suit in the fourth seat and take Lèontine's luggage from her. "Sure you got everything you need?"

Tabitha nodded and accepted his help climbing up on top of the fuselage. Before she could take her seat, Tails put a hand on her shoulder to stop her. "I'm not going to stop you," he began, locking eyes with her, "because I know this is exactly the kind of thing Princess Sally would do with Sonic. I still gotta ask though; are you thinking and acting for your people, or for yourself, when you take that seat?"

She held his gaze for a moment, contemplating his question behind her usual emotionless mask. "Friends. Family," she replied, nodding in affirmation. "You."

Satisfied, Tails gave her a brief hug. "Glad to have you with us, Tabitha," he said, releasing her. "There's no way we can lose."

Still on the ground, Lèontine faked a cough to catch their attention. "So, where's my morally-complicated prep talk?" she asked, a joker's grin belying her serious-sounding tone.

"I didn't think you needed one!" Tails said with a laugh, helping her up and giving her a short hug too. "I just assumed you'd follow me wherever like you always have been, ready to kick butt at the drop of a hat."

"You've got that right," she replied, taking her seat. "And I'm in the mood for a bit more."

Tails nodded and took his seat. "Then we're good to go. Hopefully the others won't be too far behind us, if we really floor it." Waiting for the three girls to take their seat, he sealed the canopy overhead and booted up the Tornado. The powerful turbines began to spool up with a soft whine, followed by the mechanical click as his seatbelt reached forward and clamped down around him before slowly opening up on the throttle. The craft rose into the air and slowly folded back into fighter mode, quickly picking up speed as the powerful turbines changed direction. Soon, they were hurtling across the sky at supersonic speeds, on their way to the Academy.

* * *

 

Arriving at the Academy within hours, Tails found that the place was swarming with soldiers and construction workers. Queen Henrietta stood in the center of it all, relaying orders to her head construction workers that swarmed around her like bees to a hive. Tails set the Tornado down over by his workshop, the blast from the powerful turbines forcing the workers to evacuate the immediate space around the craft as it touched down. He popped the canopy and hopped down, making his way over to the Queen's side. Her eyes lit up when she caught sight of him through the group of workers.

"Hey, Henr – your Majesty!" Tails said, catching his error. "What's going on? What's all this?" he asked, gesturing to the swarm of men rushing loads of lumber around the campus. All around the inside of the wall, wooden scaffolding was being built for defender and artillery positions. In some sections where the scaffolding had already been completed, heavy ballistas were being hoisted up onto the sturdy platforms along with barrels of man-sized quarrels.

"Oh, this? A contingency plan my advisors came up with," she said, looking around at her workers' progress. "A group of elves informed me of the situation on their way to Gallia by airship. If the castle falls, they want to be able to move me here for a second defense."

"Well, you might as well pack your bags and move out," Tails replied, "because we sorta just made plans a few hours ago to use the Academy as the main battleground to fight these guys."

Henrietta was taken aback, clearly startled at the thought. "Are you sure that's the right thing to do? If what the elves said is true…"

Tails nodded grimly. "They'll carve a path of destruction right through southern Halkeginia to get to us. Pope Vittorio was with us and more or less agreed to the plan by lack of objection, and Tabitha… Queen Charlotte, I suppose, is in full support. She actually came with me," he said, gesturing over his shoulder to Tabitha as she approached. "If the elves can evacuate in time, they'll be coming here, as well. We'll have a full house, to say the least."

"How soon until the enemy arrives?" she asked. "What will we do about citizens?"

Looking toward the central tower of the Academy, Tails tried to run some estimations in his head. "It'll be tighter than a can of sardines, but we could try to fit everyone in the main tower, maybe the dormitory towers if they’re protected. I was told that this place has some sort of magical defense system?"

"Ask Headmaster Osmond about that," Henrietta replied, her gentle smile slowly returning to her face. "That would be his specialty. It supposedly protects the entire campus from external attack, but I've never seen it in action personally. Supposedly, it's only ever been used once, when the Academy was first founded by my grandfather."

Tails nodded once more. "Alright, thanks for the help. Be right back," he said, turning toward the Academy's central tower. He took off toward the endless spiral stairs, leaving Tabitha and Lèontine behind to work with Henrietta. Flying up the staircase with tails and rocket shoes at full tilt, he reached Osmond's office door in record time. He dropped to the ground and knocked on the door three times, pushing it open slightly. "Headmaster Osmond? Can we talk for a sec?" he called into the room.

"Miles? Of course, come in!" Osmond replied. Tails slipped into the room, finding the old white-haired man scrambling to remove a slew of papers from his desktop and file them away in an array of drawers. "So, what can I help you with?" he asked.

"I have some bad news, some bad news, and some questions," Tails began, taking a seat in one of the guest chairs in front of Osmond's desk. "First, the bad news. You've heard what's happening from the Princess, I assume?"

Osmond nodded. "Yes. Quite troubling."

"Well, that's only the beginning, literally. It's the same monsters we fought when Joseph attacked Romalia, except way more of them. No matter how I slice it in my mind, they're headed here sooner or later, to eat us or to steal the Chaos Emeralds in my Tornado. We've made plans to group up here and try to fight them here. The other bad news is that, if they make it out in time and don't get massacred in their own homes, we'll have an entire city of elvish refugees headed this way within a few days to a week, probably with the enemy hot on their heels. We'll also need to take in as many refugees as we can from the Capital."

Osmond's eyes bulged, his mouth agape. "There's no way we can take that many!" he sputtered, completely confused. "We won't have the supplies to withstand a seige with that many mouths to feed…"

"It won't be a seige, sir," Tails replied, shaking his head. "I know Henrietta's men are strong, but all due respects, either we finish it fast or it's a bloodbath. No more than a day, tops. The Black Arms don't drag things out when they're hungry."

"Very well…" The old man sighed, sitting back in his chair and taking a deep draw on a pipe he had been cradling in his hands resting in his lap. "So what was your question?" he asked, the pungent sweet smoke spilling out of his lungs like a dragon's flame.

"First, I need access to the weapon cache under the Academy," Tails said. "With Saito's help, I think we can teach people how to use the smaller, more simple weapons that will give us a better advantage. Secondly, I've been told that the Academy has some sort of magical defense system. How does it work?"

"It's part of the school architecture itself. Although you might not have noticed it, there is a ring structure embedded into the floor of the ballroom used for the Slepnir ball. There are five enchanted crystals mounted on staves that affix themselves into this ring, representing the five dormitory towers. Each crystal supports a section of a protection barrier that surrounds the campus, activated by a sustained spell from inside the ring structure in the ballroom."

"Great. Now, how about projectiles?" Tails asked. "Can we fire through the shield?"

Osmond nodded. "It only defends in one direction, giving defenders within the shield a chance to attack approaching forces from safety."

"Alright, that's everything I needed to know," Tails said, hopping up from his chair. "Can we get started on unloading the weapons from the cache now?"

Headmaster Osmond nodded and stood up from his seat, taking a final puff of his pipe before setting it aside. The two slowly made their way down the stairs, opening the secret portal to the storeroom's stairwell as they went. "You know, I don't know how you don't get tired of stairs," Tails remarked as they descended into the frigid underground room.

Osmond simply chuckled at the remark. "Trust me, I do. I wish I had one of these portals to my office, most days."

Reaching the massive underground storeroom, Tails took off through the aisles, searching through the endless rows of glass display cases and hoarding weapons into his arms as he found them. When he reached his carrying capacity, he made his way to the back of the room, reaching the large canvas-covered objects he'd missed earlier. The same fragrant stench of motor oil and machined steel greeted him, drawing a smile across his face. "You said pulling the tarp will kill me with a magic spell, right?" he called back to Osmond at the front of the room, his voice echoing off the stone walls.

"Ignore that! It was just a lie to keep people from being nosy," the old man replied as he struggled around at the front of the room for something.

Setting his load of gear down, Tails walked up to the closest tarp and picked it up, yanking it off with a hard tug. "Oooh yeah, this will work nicely," the fox thought aloud, a large, child-like smile spreading across his face.

* * *

 

Outside, Tabitha and Lèontine waited patiently for Tails to return, watching the workers go about their business in the meantime. "What's taking him so long?" Lèontine muttered, her hands on her hips. "You'd think he's gotten lost on a straight stairwell or something."

Suddenly, a large blue portal opened on the wall of the central tower to the side of the main door. The blue background quickly gave way to an image of a dimly-lit room, partially blocked by something. A deafening roar resounded through the air as a massive, box-like grey vehicle rolled out of the portal onto the soft grass, a lengthy shaft sticking out of a round section on top of the vehicle. Tails' head was sticking out of a small hatch on top of the box-like portion, grinning like a maniac as workers scrambled to get out of the vehicle's way as it trundled across the grass. The vehicle came to a rest in the center of the lawn between the tower and the perimeter wall, the roar of its powerful engine dying away as the fox shut down the vehicle and hopped out, scooping up an armful of various devices that had been set in a pile on top of the vehicle before hopping down from the large craft. "Look what I found!" Tails exclaimed as he ran over, struggling to hold all of the various devices he had brought with him.

"What… what is it, exactly?" Lèontine asked, her attention still fully afixed on the vehicle.

"It's a tank! This one's in great condition," he replied, turning to look back at the magnificent vehicle. "It took me a few minutes to trace the wiring to the engine ignition and work the controls without destroying everything in the storeroom, but it runs like a dream! I'm pretty sure it's from Saito's world. I haven't tried to figure out how the gun works yet, but it still has a lot of ammo. I'm sure Saito can figure it out with his Gandalfr runes when he gets back from Gallia later today. I'm gonna go break these weapons down for cleaning and try to figure a few of them out, so we can hand them out to defenders. See ya!"

Just as abruptly as Tails had arrived, he took off toward his workshop, leaving Lèontine and Tabitha behind as the workers returned to their business. "What it is with him and weird technology, I'll never know," Lèontine said, grinning and shaking her head. Tabitha nodded in agreement and began walking toward the workshop, leaving Lèontine to catch up.


	113. Season 4 Chapter 30

As the days progressed, news from scouts got worse and worse. Among the influx of Gallian and Romalian knights and mercenaries, reports of Black Arms presence in Romalia began to filter in, filling the social atmosphere with tension as the enemy approached. Arguments broke out into short-lived fights, and the alcohol stores were draining as fast as incoming civilians could contribute to it. Amid the chaos, Tails tried to keep himself distracted by burying himself away in his workshop, juggling several projects when he wasn't helping Saito unearth the last of the weapons and fighting vehicles from the underground storeroom. Currently, having just moved the airframe of Saito’s Zero into his underground lab alongside the Tornado, Tails busied himself with the final touches on a gravity wave analyzer he had been building thanks to professor Cheveruse’s alchemy.

"Almost there…" the fox muttered to himself as he reached deep into the bulky machine in an attempt to calibrate one of the delicate lasers' aim with it's corresponding photovoltaic sensor unit. Holding in a deep breath until he felt light-headed to keep from messing up any of the sensitive electronics, he struggled through the painfully delicate work as fast as he could. With a final tweak, he slowly backed his head out of the device and let out a sigh, resting against the device's external frame to catch his breath. "I really need a clean room to be doing this kind of crap," he muttered to himself, reaching down to the ground to fetch his welding mask. Donning the heavy mask, he reached over to the power switch and flipped it, watching the bright laser light up through the dark polarized visor. To his relief, the mirror was calibrated correctly this time; if he had done it right the first time, he would have saved himself some scorched whiskers where he'd accidentally lit himself on fire. "Welding masks rock," he thought half-sarcastically as he flipped the heavy mask up, watching his handiwork with a critical eye as he searched for any flaws. "Wish I had remembered it the first time. Hot, greasy metal doesn't smell half as bad as burnt fur."

Suddenly, a loud yawn filled the room, startling Tails. "Hey, partner! How's life?" Ring's voice rang out.

"Pretty good, if there weren't who knows how many Black Arms bearing down on us," Tails replied, loosening the welding mask's headstraps to take off the heavy visor. "Where are you?"

"Over here, in your big fuckin' gun," he replied. Tails looked over to the corner of the room where the PTRD rifle stood, neglected since his return from Al Hambra in Gallia. As Ring spoke, the large bolt reciprocated back and forth, acting as Ring's mouthpiece. "Sorry I was gone for so long. That dispel stone took a lot out of me."

"Well, it's good to have you back," Tails replied. "Honestly, I was beginning to get a bit worried if you would be joining us for this next fight."

"Wouldn't miss it for all the world, bro. Looks like you guys are breakin' out the big guns upstairs, quite literally if I do say so myself."

Tails nodded. "Yep. Now that the Ostland finally arrived, we've been able to get them all set up with the students' help. Saito's been a huge help in getting it all working, too. It might be an emergency crash-course kind of thing for him to teach people how to use them, but Guiche and the knights seem to be taking it all pretty well."

"By the way, seems like something's going on upstairs. Might want to go check it out. People seem pretty happy."

Dropping the welding mask, Tails bolted for the ladder and climbed out of his workshop, bursting through the workshop door and out onto the lawn where people were cheering and pointing. Out in the distance, Tails could make out two airships approaching the Academy. As they grew closer and closer, it was apparent that they'd been in a large fight. Holes and other damage riddled the graceful wooden hulls, some still smoldering from where fires had started during the fight. The aircrafts came to a stop and gently set down just outside the Academy's perimeter wall not too far from the main gate, next to the Ostland. As soon as the ships touched down, people began to swarm over the ships' edges, using rope ladders to lower bags of possesions down the side while the loading ramps lowered. Knights and civilians alike rushed out to meet the elves in the middle, taking armloads of bags as fast as the elves could unload them. Commanding the group, Tails spotted Vitartial giving out orders from one of the ships' deck, occasionally helping lower a bag of goods to one of the ladder crews below the railing.

Tails pushed his way past the unloading crews, using his tails to fly up the side of the craft to meet Vitartial. The elf ignored him while he finished up with a last string of commands for the unloading crews, watching as they scrambled to unload the remaining cargo and civilians from below deck for a moment before turning to Tails. "Good to see you're doing well," Vitartial commented, extending a hand to Tails.

"So, I see they caught up toward the end? How far back are they?" Tails asked, taking the elf's hand and giving it a quick, firm shake.

Vitartial shook his head solemly, gesturing to the two ships and their sorry state. "We had twelve ships," he stated, scanning over the endless stream of faces as the last of the refugees poured out of the ships. "Every time they caught up, they focused on a few of the ships and forced them to the ground, staying behind to finish everyone on board. Those who escaped would gain a few hours' lead on them with a false sense of hope, but they would reach us once more, again and again. Three ships went down not long before we came here, so they can't be more than a few hours behind."

"Shit," Tails swore under his breath. "So what did the ship look like? Did you get a good look at it?... did they mess up a lot of Romalia?"

Suddenly, Vitartial looked confused. "We didn't travel by Romalia," he said, eyeing Tails closely. "We aren't dependent on coal, so we travelled directly over the ocean. Has something happened in Romalia?"

Tails was floored. "Uhh, yeah! We've been getting some seriously bad reports from Romalia that these guys have been coming along the western coast all the way up here. People've been predicting they'd be here as early as tomorrow evening!" he exclaimed.

"Well… that was unexpected," Vitartial replied. "As to their airship, it looks very much like a large shard of obsidian. Nearly as big as our capitol, in a roughly-hewn rhombus shape."

"As I thought. It's probably a part of the Black Comet that wasn't fully destroyed when we used the Eclipse Cannon. That would explain their appetite, if they have breeding facilities on board…" Tails said. "I've gotta go tell the others. Headmaster Osmond will help get your people situated, I guess." He hopped back over the railing, a quick burst of his tails slowing his fall to the soft grass below. Inside the perimeter wall, he muscled his way through the herd of elves that were milling around, waiting for instructions. He managed to find one of Tabitha's advisors among the crowd, stopping the man to ask where Tabitha was.

"Princess Charlotte is in the ballroom with professor Colbert and lady Henrietta, overseeing headmaster Osmond's work," the man replied.

Tails nodded and took off, entering through the front doors of the Academy. Making his way through the halls to the ballroom, he found the two queens, professor Colbert, and Headmaster Osmond standing around the center of the ballroom. In front of them, five green crystals stood on the end of wooden staves lodged into the ground in a circle. A line of dust connected the five staves in a pentagram pattern, piquing Tails' interest. He strode into the room, his footsteps catching Tabitha's attention. "Hey guys," he said, looking over Osmond's handiwork. "I've got bad news. The elves were being chased by the main force of Black Arms on their way here. Whatever we've been hearing about in Romalia is either a distraction or a secondary force."

"So how do we accommodate our defenses?" professor Colbert asked, a tone of weariness weighing down each word. On second look, it was obvious that the balding middle-aged man had clearly been up overnight, his endurance worn thin by non-stop preparation.

"Well, we'll have to spread out the vehicles to increase coverage, which means people manning them will have a harder time getting back inside the wall…" Tails offered, trailing off as he realized the implication of his statement. "No, that's no good. We'll have to find something else. Maybe-"

"Ladders," Tabitha offered, her soft voice cutting through Tails' statement instantly. "Ladders on the perimeter wall."

"…yeah! We can line the walls with ladders to help people get back in if we lose the vehicles," Tails agreed. "I'm sure the construction workers have a few ladders we can use, or can make some more."

Without warning, a large explosion rocked the Academy, violently shaking the ground. Tails took to the air to avoid falling over as the others struggled to stay on their feet. As the shaking subsided, the sound of cries resounded through the halls as chaos ensued outside. "Shit, could they already be here?!" Tails thought to himself, landing and sprinting for the door.

In the perimeter yard, elves and construction workers alike were scrambling for cover as small chunks of dirt and grass rained down. Far in the distance, a writhing cloud of black took up a large chunk of the horizon, slowly approaching toward the Academy. Two mountainous black objects took the front of the group, one in the air and the other on the ground. "I know what the airship is, but what the hell is that other thing?!" Tails thought aloud. "Anyone got binoculars?"

All around Tails, knights rushed to their position with the weapons from the storeroom pile that Saito had shown them how to use. Tails flew over to the scaffolding and took a scoped bolt-action rifle from one of the soldiers, peering through the telescopic sight at the distant objects. There, in the distance, he could see an innumerable mass of small dragon-like Black Arms Hawks flapping their wings in uncanny unison, with a few glimmering golden Volts dotting the ranks. Heading the group, a black, monsterous winged lizard-beast so large, it filled the scope's field of view. The shine of pulsing, throbbing machinery on its back caught Tails' eye and confirmed his suspicion, filling him with a paralyzing fear. "Holy shit, it's the Biolizard! But how???" he thought, his mind racing to find how this could possibly be “Did they save some of its DNA after we killed it? Or maybe Eggman’s grandfather gave them samples… This just went from zero to a hundred really quick.”

As quickly as he'd gotten up on the balcony, he thrusted the rifle back into the soldier's arms and dropped down to the grass below, scrambling to his feet. Tabitha, Queen Henrietta and the two professors had just arrived outside when Tails reached the door, taking a moment to catch his breath. "Where's Saito?" he asked, looking around. "They're here, they're mad, and they are VERY well armed. We need those vehicles up and ready thirty minutes ago."

Over the yelling of the guards, an engine roared to life. Tails turned to see Saito's head poking out of the top of the “Tiger I” heavy tank, manning the controls. Guiche's head poked out of the commander's cupola, grinning from ear to ear as the heavy vehicle lurched forward. The blond-haired boy yelled something, only to be drowned out by the tank's massive engine as it rolled across the grass and out through the main gate. Behind it, the eclectic mix of fighting vehicles from the storeroom followed suit, manned by the Ordine Knights and members of the Gunpowder squadron; vehicles ranging from primitive tractor-drawn cannons to modern anti-aircraft vehicles rolled out in sequence, spreading out along the outer perimeter of the Academy's walls. As the vehicles finished taking their positions facing the enemy, Tails rushed out to Saito and hopped up onto the tank, bending over to yell in the boy's ear over the rumble of the engine. "You see that big black monster at the front of the group?" He yelled.

"Yeah! What about it?" Saito yelled back.

Tails gestured to his back with his hand. "Aim for the machinery on its back! It's a life support system you need to take down first before you can do any damage to it!"

"Got it!" Saito replied, nodding. "What about the flying rock?"

"…I dunno! When I figure it out, I'll let you know!" Tails concluded before hopping down from the tank. Walking along the line of vehicles toward the main gate, he stopped at the rear of an armored car with several rocket launcher units mounted on a turret on the back. "Saito said it was called an Avenger or something?" he thought, looking the craft over. "Anti-air missiles, he said. They better not try to shoot me down if I go airborne…"

When he was finished looking over the vehicle, he walked back through the main gate and made his way through the rapidly receding crowd of elves and civilians toward his workshop. "I suppose I better get topside with the Tornado to help out," he thought to himself, stepping into the wooden building. He walked over to the trapdoor and lifted it up, climbing down into the illuminated metal room. Turning around, he found Tabitha seated on his hammock, and both Ilococoo and Lèontine reclining on the X Tornado beyond Saito's Zero airframe. "Well, it's started," he announced, looking around at the three girls. "I'm headed out in the Tornado to see what damage I can cause before they start their assault."

"Can we come?" Ilococoo asked eagerly, perking up from her drowsiness.

Tails shook his head. "Not yet. I want you guys to stay and help defend the Academy," he said. "Don't get killed, and be ready when they get close. I want you to stay within the walls and kill any bad guys that get inside. They'll probably have dropships like they had at Romalia, so be ready for them to pop up everywhere around campus. Don't let them get into the dorm towers, where the civilians are."

Lèontine and Ilococoo hopped down from the Tornado. As Tails walked over, Lèontine gave him a friendly punch on the shoulder. "Save some for us, and come back in one piece while you're at it, alright?" she said, a slight smirk on her face. He could see the smile waver a bit as he nodded in reply. "Don't worry. The Tornado's made of nothing but the best," he replied, returning the smile. "I'm sure I'll be fine. Heck, I should be asking YOU to save some for me when I get back!" He walked over to the far side of the Tornado's fuselage and opened the compartment where the Chaos Emeralds rested. Satisfied by the warm, multi-colored glow of the five gems, he shut the hatch and climbed up onto the X Tornado's fuselage. He opened the front cockpit with the manual release switch, hopping down into his seat to begin the bootup sequence. With a single press of a button on his wristcomm, the hydraulics of his hangar lift sprung into action, slowly raising the platform the Tornado rested upon above ground. He gave the girls a final wave and a smile as they disappeared from view beneath the platform, only pushing the craft into motion when the elevator had locked into place at ground level. The few defenders not on the makeshift scaffolding parted as the Tornado stomped out of the hangar elevator in Walker form, the turbines spinning up faster and faster with each millimeter Tails pressed the thruster lever forward. With a deafening roar, the Tornado lifted into the air, blasting forward and plastering Tails to his seat as the turbines rotated into fighter mode.

"So, what's the battle plan, Partner?" Ring said in Tails' mind. A large green question mark appeared on the Tornado's radar screen, courtesy of the sword spirit.

"Well… I'm not sure," Tails admitted. "I don't think I'll be able to get close enough to the Biolizard without taking some serious damage, and losing the Chaos Emeralds is the last thing we need."

"So, then why are you out here?"

"Because I need to help, damn it!" Tails pounded his knee, his anger welling up in him. "There's almost no way the others will be able to get through this, even with all those weapons from Earth. Back on the ARK, GUN couldn't even destroy the first Biolizard with much better weapons than what we've got. This thing… It's way tougher, I can tell. Look."

As the Tornado raced toward the dark cloud of enemies, Tails fixated his eyes on the ebony-black, scaly behemoth at the head of the pack. Massive wings lay folded up against its back, loaded with razor-sharp spikes at every tip and ridge to dice opposing attackers if they got too close. "The first Biolizard was literally made out of a lizard, a harmless little reptile. They used dragon DNA for this thing, which is nothing but bad news bears for all of us. The last one could use Chaos powers and energy projectiles… I don't even wanna know what comes out of that thing's mouth. It'd melt the Academy to nothing but red-hot slag once it gets close enough," he thought.

"So, what about that life support thing you were telling Saito about?"

Tails shook his head. "I might be able to penetrate it with the Tornado's lasers if I get close enough, but that'd be suicide. Volts would be on me in a minute, and even if I could outrun them, they'll get me soon enough."

"Partner, up ahead. New targets." The green question mark on the radar screen gave way to a triangular warning symbol, quickly fading to the radar detection screen with several large dots highlighted among the wall of green ahead of him. Tails looked up to see several larger black dots spreading out from the arrowhead-shaped mothership. "Dropships," he growled, pushing the throttle forward a slight bit more. "If I can take those out, that'll limit how many they can get on the ground." He opened up with the Tornado's afterburner, quickly closing the distance between himself and the first dropship. "Here goes nothing!" he thought, fingering the laser cannon's trigger…


	114. Season 4 Chapter 31

Saito watched through the  _Tiger 1_ 's cannon optics as the X Tornado plunged into the black cloud of flying things. Almost as soon as he disappeared, the air around him crackled with blue arcs of electricity, followed by bright flashes of yellow behind the wall of flapping wings. Suddenly, an explosion filled the air, the shockwave pushing Black Arms Hawks and Volts away from the expanding ball of fire. Through the clearing, he coud see a heavily-damaged aircraft like the one he'd seen in Romalia slowly descend to the ground, the entire left half of the craft on fire. "Fuck yeah, Tails!" he cheered, accidentally punching the roof of the tank in his excitement. Caressing his sore fist, he looked back through the optics to observe the craft as it fell, catching a quick glimpse of Tails as he streaked past the falling craft, a horde of golden Volts on his trail like a yellow streamer tied to the Tornado's rear.

Looking back at the falling craft, he caught sight of several puffs of smoke. Five black balls the size of a minivan hurtled his way, falling short in the field a couple hundred meters. He scrambled to work the foot pedal turret controls, re-adjusting the gun to the nearest black ball with the hand crank adjustment. By the time he got the gun on target, a black alien had already dismounted from its one-way ride, rushing headfirst at the Academy with some weird gun-like weapon raised.

"Here they come!" Guiche yelled over the rumble of the tank's hefty engine, ducking in from the commander's hatch. "Saito, you see him?!"

"Yeah, Guiche, I got him. Hold those earmuffs tight!" Saito replied, making the final adjustment to gun elevation for the range. With a loud slam as he flipped the primer switch, the entire tank shuddered as the gun roared, followed by a loud clang as the empty shell casing that ejected from the cannon breech dropped to the floor. In a bright flash of red tracer light, the alien evaporated under the impact of the eighty-eight-millimeter tank shell. The explosive round, failing to detonate from hitting such a soft target, had continued through the Black Arms soldier into its ejection pod, exploding the pod into thousands of various-sized fragments. "Guiche, load me a new one and start keeping tally!" Saito said with a grin.

* * *

 

Tails weaved and dodged through the bolts of energy that arced past the Tornado from behind, feathering the laser cannons to fire them as fast as he dared without overheating them. "All this attention, I'll never get a chance to really focus on another dropship!" he mumbled. As if to add to his woes, a loud series of chirps resounded from the control console, warning him that a missile had locked on. Straining to look around as quickly as he could, he noticed a bright flash of light from the Academy as an anti-aircraft missile streaked toward him. "Fucking friendly fire!" he yelled, pulling the Tornado around to face the incoming rocket.

Suddenly, a lightbulb went on. He punched the throttle to maximum in addition to the afterburner, rushing the missile head-on as fast as he could. With split-millisecond timing, he yanked up on the stick and killed the throttle, pulling the craft into a half-loop so steep he struggled to keep from blacking out under the immense pressure. The missile, unable to adjust course so quickly, careened into the string of Volts that had been on Tails' tail, carving a swath out of the enemy group.

"Bulls-eye," he thought with a grin, pushing the thruster slider to half-speed and spinning the craft right-side up. "That should buy me some time, I think. Now, for the dropships…" He re-aimed the nose of the aircraft at the nearest dropship, taking a moment to prepare the shot before giving the trigger a solid squeeze. The nose-cannons hummed as a spray of yellow bolts zipped across the sky, carving a line along the side of the dropship. As the Tornado darted past the stricken craft, Tails was dismayed to see that he'd failed to penetrate any critical components, only damaging three of the five drop-pods on that side of the craft. "Damn, I'll have to loop around and try again," he grumbled, jerking the craft in every direction to avoid head-on collisions in the maze of enemy Hawks. He eventually made his way out in front of the enemy horde, taking a moment to re-orient himself before any more enemy Volts could mount another aerial chase.

"Hey, Miles. Dragon-Lizard-Bio-thing?" Ring asked. "Might wanna put some work in on killing it sometime soon. They're within a mile or so now."

"Working on it!" he replied, bringing the craft around. With a gentle push on the control stick, the craft dropped into a dive, rapidly picking up speed as he aligned the nose of the craft with the back of the black behemoth. "Wait for it, wait for it…" he thought to himself, his fingers tightening around the trigger as he waited for the Tornado to get within effective range of the laser nose guns. As soon as the distance was sufficiently closed, Tails opened up with the yellow lasers once more, hosing down the silver-and-pink machinery on the dragon's back. Almost as quickly as the bolts contacted, a compact pink energy shield materialized itself around the device's form, intercepting the bolts. Tails pulled out of his dive at the last second, almost scraping his wingtip against the pink shield as he streaked past the creature. "Definitely has a Chaos Emerald," he thought to himself, frustrated at his own stupidity as he streaked low over the treetops. "Why didn't I expect that?"

"Bro, behind youOH SHITFUCKSH-!" Ring yelled, followed by a deafening roar as the Tornado was engulfed in a world of red flame, only saved milliseconds in advance by Ring's blue shield. Tails quickly pulled back on the Tornado's control stick in a panic, bursting out of the top of the thousand-foot-long blast of flames that had engulfed the Tornado. He craned his head up to see the the black dragon behind him, its head turned toward the craft with a deathly, primeval stare. On the ground below, he could see nothing but fire, the remains of burning trees blown over and flattened by the explosive force of the dragon's breath. "What the…" Tails gasped, looking back at the dragon as the Tornado streaked into the sky. The dragon opened its gaping maw and let out an earth-shaking roar that filled Tails' chest, only to turn its eyes back to the Academy once more.

"Ring, you with me? I think we're out of range of that thing," Tails said, looking down at the radar screen.

"…ugh, yeah I'm here," Ring replied meekly. "Shit, I feel awful, bro. No way I can take another one of those, or we're both toastier than the top of a crème brulee."

"Dang, we're going to need something more to take that thing out. I'm going to do a fly-by of the Academy and see how they're holding out. I'm no use in the air once the other dropships have unloaded."

"Fine. I'll be in your runes if you need me."

* * *

 

With a final burst, the chatter of the bow machine gun died away as it devoured the remaining few rounds of the ammunition belt. Guiche reached for a new belt, accidentally dropping it in surprise when the entire tank rocked from the recoil of another cannon shell. "Shit, they just won't stop coming!" Guiche yelled as he fed in a new belt to the tank’s bow-mounted machine gun like Saito had shown him, yanking back hard on the charging handle with his sore fingers.

"No kidding!" Saito replied, kicking aside the pile of empty shell casings that had amassed underneath the cannon breech as he hopped up from his seat to retrieve a new shell from an untouched ammo rack. Noticing the odd coloring of the shell, he shrugged and slammed it into the cannon breech, locking it in place. "Probably an armor piercing, since all those last ones exploded like a big grenade," he thought as he took his seat at the cannon controls. Looking through the gunner's optics, he adjusted the gun to the sky to get a better look at the approaching dropships. "I bet I could hit one of those by now," he thought, laying his hand on the manual adjustment crank. Empowered by his Gandalfr runes, his hands instinctually worked over the controls to lead the approaching target, nearly maxing out the gun elevation. "Try this on for size!" he yelled, slamming the primer switch shut. He watched as the tracer, yellow this time, sailed through the air to the distant airship, slamming into the front of the aircraft. The round ripped through the front of the craft, spewing black fragments in every direction from the bottom and top of the craft where the shell had exited; its control room damaged, the craft began to list to the left, spinning in a circle as it slowly dipped into a dive, a plume of black smoke emerging from where the shell had punched through the ship. Along the sides of the ship, all ten of the drop pods launched simultaneously as the crew attempted to bail from their falling ship.

Nodding in satisfaction, Saito hopped up from his seat to fetch another shell when a loud slam on the roof of the tank had caught his attention. Moments later, the commanders' hatch was ripped open, revealing a hulking Black Arms alien standing on the roof of the turret, peering down into the poorly-lit tank interior. Realizing that there wasn't any room to maneuver Derflinger, Saito reached into the front pocket on his hoodie and withdrew an old single-action revolver he'd snatched from the underground storeroom. He quickly unloaded the handgun's cylinder into the beast, tossing the gun aside as the monster went limp and fell backward off the turret roof. "Time to go!" he yelled as he reached for Guiche, yanking him out of the bow-gunner's seat with adrenaline-induced strength and pushing him toward the commander's hatch. "We were tunnel-visioned! They're already behind us!" Saito yelled, cutting the blond-haired boy before he could start an argument. Guiche nodded and scrambled up through the commander's hatch, wand in hand and Saito close behind.

Standing on top of the tank, Saito could see almost all of the defenders on the scaffolding had turned inwards, struggling to operate their foreign weaponry in the heat of the moment against enemies within the walls. To his left and right, all of the vehicles were abandoned; a broken windshield here and there showed signs of forced entry, but all of the engines were still running, the vehicles themselves otherwise untouched. "Shit, where did everyone go?!" Saito thought as he hopped down from the tank, drawing Derflinger as he ran up to the edge of the main gate. Peeking inside, it was apparent that all hell had broken loose, with Black Arms soldiers of all different sizes mixed up with Academy students and knights of different factions in an all-out brawl. "Derflinger, don't fail me now!" Saito said as he readied his sword.

"Oh, shut up, knucklehead, stop being so dramatic. Have I ever let you down?" the sword replied.

Saito grinned. "Just checking to see if you were still there. Let's go!"

* * *

 

From Tails' birds-eye view in the Tornado, the Academy was crawling with a mass of indistinguishable bodies like an agitated ant-hill. Outside the walls, it wasn't much better; an endless stream of Black Arms soldiers flowed out of the woods toward the Academy from the south, pink lasers blazing as they tried to shoot cavalry units that swept through their ranks without causing too much friendly fire. He brought the Tornado in for a low pass, nose cannons blazing as he tried to get a better look at the mysterious allied cavalrymen. He was only able to catch a brief glimpse of a few soldiers up close, but he smiled when he noticed the weapons they were carrying. "Germanian soldiers! Carrying Johann’s guns, I'm sure," he thought as he brought the Tornado around for another pass, clearing another line in the enemy forces. Realizing what was going on, the ground forces raised their lasers high and began firing at the passing jet en masse, filling the air with pink bolts. Despite Tails' best attempts at weaving and dodging, a few bolts managed to hit their mark, scoring the underside of the craft with burn marks. Pink energy crackled along the gold-titanium plating, dispersing itself among the entirety of the craft's airframe as warning messages regarding the threat of energy overload filled the radar screen.

As the Tornado got out of range of enemy fire, a brain-numbing explosion rocked Tails' ears as the sky filled with a burst of red light, followed by a shockwave that shook the entire craft like a ragdoll. As the blast subsided, Tails looked over his shoulder to see a huge section of the forest behind the Academy flattened and on fire; the Academy itself still standing only thanks to a green umbrella-like shield that had sprouted from the top of the central tower, descending to the around the perimeter wall in a protective bubble. "Must be those crystals Osmond set up," Tails thought as he brought the Tornado around to get a better look at the blast site. There, at the epicenter of the circle of flattened, flaming trees, sat the Blue Typhoon.

"Uhh… What the hell is that?" Ring asked.

"Our ticket to winning," Tails replied, giddy with excitement. "We need more than just you and me to work it, though. Can we get through that shield around the Academy?"

"Well, when in doubt, ramming things hard enough always breaks them."

Tails brought the Tornado around, slowing down as he approached the Academy. "I'll leave the ramming part to you, Ring. See if you can break it with your shield."

Ahead of the Tornado, a large blue sphere-shaped bubble appeared in front of the Tornado. The bubble pushed its way into the Academy's green shield, parting the green in place of the blue. Tails switched the Tornado into Walker mode, slowly hovering through the hole Ring's blue shield had made. He hopped out of the craft as soon as it touched down, making his way through the ruined courtyards. All around him, the few remaining living soldiers and students were busy clearing the bloodied lawn of friendly and enemy corpses. Several defenders who were stationed on the balcony stood apprehensively watching the enemies as they surrounded the green bubble shield outside, notably fewer in number than before the battle had begun. A moment of panic seized him as he darted around campus, praying that Tabitha, Lèontine, or Kirche were among the bodies behing hauled away.

To his extreme relief, he found Tabitha, Lèontine and Ilococoo working together to heal injured students. As he approached, he watched as Ilococoo and Lèontine, with her massive griffon talons, worked to hold Guiche down as Tabitha chanted a spell over his leg, broken and contorted in a gruesome way. With a sickening crackle, the leg began to straighten itself out, the pain of the operation spurring the blond-haired boy to howl in pain. Within moments, Guiche fell silent and slumped back against the grass, unconscious from the sensory overload. Tabitha stood up, looking around for the next victim to help as Lèontine and Ilococoo carried the young man to a safe place to recuperate – something she looked like she needed herself. Her cloak was tattered at the edges, and a few small bleeding cuts on her arms and stomach showed through small holes torn in her shirt.. Tails stepped forward to greet her, tapping her on the shoulder to catch her attention. "Hey, I need you three for a bit. I think I've got a plan," he said.

Nodding, Tabitha put her hand to her mouth and let out an ear-piercing whistle. Ilococoo came running over, followed by Lèontine close behind; both looked equally worse for wear as Tabitha. Tails shepherded them over to the Tornado and helped them up inside before taking a seat and donning his headset once more.

"So, what's going on?" Lèontine asked. "Was that explosion..."

"No, it wasn't from the enemy. You'll see," Tails replied. Once the Tornado's turbines had spooled up, he opened up on the throttle, taking to the air. Ring took the liberty of parting the Academy's shield with his own, allowing the Tornado to pick up some speed as it switched over to fighter configuration. As the Blue Typhoon came into view, Tails could hear an audible gasp from his headset. "What is it?" Ilococoo asked, a sense of wonder filling her voice. "It looks so… weird and shiny, and it's got trees on it!"

"That's the Blue Typhoon. It's my biggest ship, by far. I've told you about it before, Tabitha," Tails replied. "I'm going to bring us in, and with a bit of luck, we'll get it up and running with the Chaos Emeralds from the Tornado here. Just a few more seconds, aaaand…"

On approach to the carrier deck of the Typhoon, Tails lowered the throttle and deployed the Tornado's fighter-mode landing gear with a single switch. With a brief lurch, the Tornado caught the landing cable at the end of the runway, coming to a quick stop on the launch pad. Connecting to the Tornado through a short probe from beneath, the launch pad spun the Tornado about as it descended into the lower hangar. As the platform finished its descent, the platform slid forward on a metal track, carrying the X Tornado over to its dedicated spot in the hangar room between some of Tails' other craft, the Hyper Tornado and Amy's personal craft she had left with him. Tails popped both canopies and hopped out, rushing over to the access hatch to grab the five Chaos Emeralds as the three girls hopped down. "Alright, follow me!" Tails exclaimed, rushing over to to an elevator on the far side of the hangar with the Emeralds cradled in his arms. With the press of a button, the elevator took off backward, nearly knocking the girls over from the lurch while Tails held on to the railing with a grin. Following a track system through the midsection of the craft toward the rear, the elevator came to a stop at a station in the hallway right outside the main command center.

"Head on in and take a seat, but don't touch any of the controls until I get back," Tails instructed. He took off down the hallway, taking in all the familiar sights as he ran. "It's good to be back," he thought aloud as he ran. He came to a stop in front of another, special elevator, stepping inside and punching in a code into a keypad. Accepting the code, the screen flashed green as the elevator began its descent into the belly of the craft.

Deep inside the rear of the craft, the elevator came to a halt. Tails bolted out as soon as the door opened, running over to a circular machine centered in a large room loaded with machinery and lined with wire conduits. He circled around the machine, loading the five Emeralds into their respective slots. With each added Emerald, a check light on the top of the machine lit up to indicate that the ship was receiving power. "There, that should do it," he thought as he inserted the fifth Emerald into its slot. "It's not the same as the Master Emerald, but we should still be able to fly and fight. Charging times for the Sonic Driver cannon might be slow, though." His work done, he took off for the elevator he'd arrived on, making his way back to the control room.

"Ready when ye' are, Capt'n!" Ring joked, imitating a pirate's voice.

Tails walked around to his command chair in the center of the room and took a seat, entering in a string of commands to a waiting console. With a brief flicker of the lights, a low-pitched hum began to fill the craft, followed by a brief shake as the craft slowly took to the air. "Systems check complete. All systems green," a soft, digitized voice spoke from the command console. "System bootup complete."

"Alright, let's go!" Tails cheered, raising a fist. His custom operating system for the ship appeared on the screen, switching over to a display including a schematic of the ship, an aerial radar, and a massive grid of numbers. "A few more seconds, and the capacitors should be charged enough to boot up the shields. Lèontine, I want you on weapons over there," he said, pointing toward the chair and console to his left. "Tabitha, battery and maintenance systems over there. Ilococoo, uhh… communications, over there. I doubt they'll try to contact us, but we might as well be ready."

As the girls took their seats, Lèontine raised her hand. "Hey, I can't read all this text. What do I do?". Ilococoo nodded in agreement.

Tails didn't bother looking up from his control panel as his hands flew over the keyboard, shutting down unnecessary power-drawing devices across the ship. "Tabitha, can you do some more translation spells?" he asked. A bright blue light filled Tails' perephiral vision as Tabitha worked her magic, followed by a short "thank you!" from Lèontine in response. Eyeing a single number among the grid of values on screen, Tails' hand hovered above the enter key, waiting to input a code that would serve as the bootup sequence for the ship's energy shield. "Damn, this charging rate is gonna be slow. Keeping the shield up at all times, we'll hardly be able to get any shots off," he thought as he watched the capacitor charge level rise painfully slowly.

Finally, he pressed the enter key. Through the meter-thick layer of special glass that gave the control deck it's fantastic view, Tails noticed a brief distortion of everything he could see beyond the ship, signalling the ship’s multi-purpose shield and cloaking unit had booted up successfully. "Now, it's down to how much time we have before the BioLizard dragon thing attacks us or the Academy," he thought. Suddenly, a mass of red blips showed up on his radar screen, indicating enemies that were approaching from below the ship's gun deck.

He turned to Lèontine, pointing at her control console. "Lèo, look for a button that says 'Arm Perimeter Defense', near the top right. Then, in the drop down menu, select only low aerial defense."

Tabitha nodded, tapping through the touch-screen menus to the specific option. A short alarm sounded across the deck, indicating that weapon systems had gone live. Returning his attention to his own screen, he watched as the mass of red began to thin out, with some red dots being replaced with green. "Alright, go ahead and activate high aerial defense too, Lèo."

Another alarm sounded. Grinning, Tails looked up to see several defense turrets spring up around the ship, turning to engage the squadron of Black Arms Hawks and Volts that carried lighter foot soldiers toward the Blue Typhoon. With the audible buzz of discharging lasers filling his chest, he sat back in his chair and watched as a light show erupted before him, the turrets vaporizing the aerial offense with frightening accuracy.

"Whoa, now THAT's cool!" Ring said in Tails' mind. "I'd kill to give that a go some day."

"Sorry, I'll let my targeting software do the work today. I don't think you could micromanage that many turrets as easily as it can," he thought, turning to his display. He frowned at the sight of the capacitor charge percentage, noting that it had dropped a percent for just that short burst alone. "Hey, Lèo. Go ahead and shut down the air defense," he called as he worked over the schematic of the craft, hunting for any excess power drain with a critical eye.

"Tails, heads up!" Lèontine called. Tails jerked his head up, watching as the monsterous dragon creature extended its wings as it reared up on its hind legs, it's jaws open and a ball of light building in the back of its throat. Tails crossed his fingers, watching with a sense of helplessness as the dragon slammed back down on all fours and released its pent-up breath toward the Academy. A jet of flaming gas spewed forth from the dragon's mouth with obscene speed, engulfing the Academy in a ball of fire so big that the school was completely hidden by flame and smoke for what seemed like several minutes. Finally, the dragon exhaled the last of its breath, bringing the jet of fire to an end. As the smoke and fire cleared, Tails could see the shield still standing around the untouched Academy, feebly flickering in and out of existence. With a last flash, the shield shattered into millions of shards that individually twinkled out of existence like stars.

"Crap, what to do, what to do?!?" he thought aloud as he eyed his control console, watching the capacitor charge percentage like a hawk. "Twenty percent… Not enough. Twenty-five percent is the cutoff for a fully-charged shot, while keeping the engines and shield running. Besides, we'd need two shots of the Sonic driver; one for the dragon, one for the ship. That'd take too long."

"Tails, what are we waiting for?" Ring asked. "The shield's down, and the enemy is moving. We need to move!"

"I know, damn it!" Tails replied, slamming his fist against the arm rest of his chair. "It's just, if we use the cannon-"

"Just get it ready. Trust me, if anyone can stop them right now, it's you. Figure it out."

Tails looked up from his controls, watching as Black Arms soldiers surrounding the Academy walls streamed in through the front gate. "…Damn. Alright, let's go," he replied. He tapped on the diagram of the ship on his console screen, enlarging the diagram in addition to several slider values. "We'll bring the ship right over the top of the Academy and run the guns to clear out the attackers. Hopefully, we can simply sit put and use the shield to block the dragon's shots." He increased the slider values on the right side of the ship, firing the starboard and rear thrusters at half throttle.

The massive starship slid diagonally through the air, overshadowing the Academy below. "Lèontine, go ahead and get the lower guns ready again!" Tails called as he brought the ship to a standing hover over the Academy. "There should be a button that allows you to manually control select turrets. Make sure not to hit any friendlies!"

"On it!" Lèontine replied, frantically tapping through the software's plethora of options as Tails had instructed. As the loud alarm rang out on the gun deck once more, the low, sporadic hum of laser turrets on the underside of the ship filled Tails' ears as he focused on the grid of data on his screen. "Die, you black bastards!" Lèontine yelled, a note of giddy rage in her voice.

"Tails, the dragon's getting airborne!" Ring blurted out in Tails' mind.

Tails looked up from his screen once more, watching as the massive beast began to beat its wings, the immense downdraft of each beat nearly flattening the few remaining un-torched trees that surrounded it. Black Arms Hawks cleared out of the way as the dragon took to the air, much to Tails' surprise. "I swear, that thing's less aerodynamic than a bumblebee, but it can fly. Chaos Emeralds for you, I guess," he remarked. "Wait a second… This is the break we needed!"

His hands flew over the keyboard, executing a sequence of codes he'd practiced over and over until it had become second nature. With a burst of the alarm, Tails watched as a section of the runway at the front of the craft parted down the middle, sliding open to reveal a long, blue cylinder with a yellow ring around the tip. The barrel of a large cannon rose out of its compartment below the runway, locking into position with surgical precision. A glass apparatus popped out of the top of his control console, drawing an illuminated yellow reticle that allowed him to aim the cannon. Leaving a line of code typed into the command console without entering it, he launched himself out of his chair, rushing over to the hallway. "Tabitha, take my chair. I'll get Ring to tell you what to do here in a second, but I've… got something I've gotta do real fast. Be back in a bit."

Not bothering to look back, he sprinted down the hall, delving deeper into the spaceship until he reached a sealed blast door, near the front of the ship's interior. "Dang, to think I'd be using this on myself," he thought half-jokingly as he punched in a code on a keypad to the side of the thick metal door. The door slid open, revealing a small, well-lit room with several display monitors. "Last time I used this, I was launching Shadow into space to keep him from killing Cosmo. If my aim was right, I should be fine, though… I hope."

Reaching into the room, he lifted the glass casing around a large red button labeled "Emergency Defense Cannon Loader" and gave it a firm press, stepping back out into the hallway. The heavy blast doors quickly slammed shut as a pair of glass walls descended on either side of Tails. Remembering at the last moment, he hastily undid Ring's sheath and slid it underneath the glass wall as it closed, locking Tails in. A platform began to raise out of the ground, carrying him through a vent that opened into the roof and up through the heavy mount of the Sonic Driver cannon, into the breech of the massive gun. "Ring?" Tails thought. "I need you to send a message now."

* * *

 

"And yeah… He needs you to do this sorta soon, while the point of aim he set is still accurate," Ring finished explaining.

"But what will happen to him?" Tabitha thought, pushing up her glasses as she took her seat at Tails' master console. Her hand hovered over the enter key, waiting for a definitive response from Ring regarding Tails' fate.

"I'm sure he'll be fine, don't worry about it. He's always got things thought through, right?"

"Get a response from him."

"I to-"

"Do it."

"Fine, gimme a second," Ring grumbled. After several moments of tense and motionless waiting, Ring finally returned, announcing his presence in Tabitha's mind by imitating an attempt at clearing his throat. "His words, verbatim, are 'Don't worry, everything will be fine. The gun's aim should still be true, so with all luck, I'll lose enough energy after hitting the ship that I'll go into LEO around the planet and land somewhere nearby in a few hours'. I don't know what he means by ‘LEO’, but it sounds like he knows what he's talking about."

"It means he'll probably die as he falls out of the sky at hundreds of miles per hour, bursting into flames as the air in front of him compresses enough to ignite. Physics of friction. I can't lose him again, no-"

"Shut up right there," Ring demanded, suddenly filled with an anger that chilled Tabitha to the bone. "Just shut the FUCK UP. Maybe you don't quite realize what's going on right now, but Brimir so help me, don't make me use Tails’ shield over there and press that button myself. Aside from the fact that I'm positive that my partner knows what he's doing… if he doesn't, he at least knows that he's sacrificing himself for you. For everyone here. That's a helluva lot more than any of you sorry assholes could say for yourselves, and a lot more than what I could say for anyone I've worked for in the past. He's made his decision to protect you and everyone here, so you have NO fucking right to step in and second-guess him. Not after all he's done for you ungrateful bunch."

"That's where you're wrong," Tabitha replied cooly. "I am grateful. He's made more of a change to my life than anyone I've ever met… positively, anyway. He means more to me than the whole world. He promised me that I would get to go home with him someday… And I won't let anything stand between me and that dream."

Ring sighed. "Listen, Tabitha. You love him?"

"Yes."

"Great. He loves you too, if you haven't gotten that already. He'd rather see you safe from space than dead in his arms. If you haven't gotten that already, then I don't know how else to help you. You NEED to press that button, or you're denying him his last wish. And don't think I was bluffing about coming down there and pressing it myself." Right on cue, a small blue shield-entity with a humanoid shape appeared in front of Tabitha on the console keyboard, pointing accusatively at the button underneath Tabitha's finger. "I don't let my partners down, so if you don't, I will. Make your choice."

Unable to hold it any longer, Tabitha lowered her head, staring at the button through a film of tears. "Damn you to hell, Ring. I'll never forgive you for this," she muttered, firmly pushing the button down.

* * *

 

All around Tails, the interior of the cannon began to glow as energy flooded from the ship's capacitors to the cannon's propulsion circuits. He could feel energy from the Chaos Emeralds flooding into his system, filling him with a comforting warmth. Around his neck, the golden clasp that held his cloak on began to get warm to the touch, absorbing heat from his body. "Well crud, I forgot to take that off earlier. Looks like I'll need a new one," Tails thought as he smoothed out the dark purple fabric behind him. "Then again, it might be a while before I get back, so… hopefully, I'll need a new one," he added, pushing the dark thought out of his mind of what lay before him. "Lets' just hope this works. Here goes nothing."

Feeling a sense of weightlessness, the fox allowed himself to be carried into the air as the Chaos Radiation flooding the gun breech lifted him off of the platform he'd ridden into the gun and into the air. The lights began to reach blinding levels of brightness, forcing him to close his eyes after a last glimpse of his targets. Amid the mind-numbing din of the cannon charging, a single thought popped into his head; a few song lyrics that had been stuck in the back of his mind for what seemed like ages.

_"Fly me to the moon, and let me play among the stars…"_


	115. Season 4 Chapter 32

Amid the chaos within the Academy, all activity ceased as a deafening roar and blast of yellow light filled the air. Humans and Black Arms alike looked up to the airship overhead as bombardment from the ship's under-hull turrets ceased, only to be replaced by a fantastic line of light projecting from the front of the ship. The yellow line reached out, touching the black dragon and punching clean through it and the enemy mothership behind it. With a bright flash, the black airship and dragon exploded into a ball of pink-tinted flame that engulfed a majority of the millions of nearby Black Arms Hawks as the device on the dragon's back burst into millions of fragments. Suddenly, combat resumed as the humans took advantage of the utter surprise the Black Arms faced, turning the tide and clearing out the remainders of the Black Arms invaders within a half hour.

Hacking and slashing his way through the last of the Black Arms, Saito jammed the tip of a chipped and battered Derflinger into the grass, taking a look at his handiwork. "Man, talk about overkill!" he thought as he turned to the enemy mothership, the first of the smaller fragments descending to the ground in the distance as the obsidian ship slowly broke apart under the penetrating blow. With an earth-shaking *thud*, the body of the monsterous dragon slammed to the ground, forcing Saito to lean against Derflinger to maintain his balance. Looking beyond the ship, he noticed that the beam of light had continued through the ship, off into the blue unknown as it faded away to nothingness. "I guess he'll be getting the royal treatment tonight!"

* * *

 

"You WHAT?!" Lèontine yelled in a fit of rage, planting herself firmly in front of Tabitha with an white-knuckled iron grip on the control console. "YOU FUCKING KILLED TAILS?!" With a bright flash, her arms reverted to their talon-tipped griffon form as she reaching over the control console to slice open the little blue-haired girl's throat. Seeing the tears in Tabitha's eyes, Lèontine stopped herself, falling to her knees and covering her face with her talons. "Oh god… he's really gone, isn't he?" she asked, halfway expecting someone to answer her with a resounding "no". Tabitha only nodded meekly, resting her arms against the control panel and letting her head down. She herself could hardly register the fact that, despite Tails' reassuring words, he was most likely gone. No matter how much she told herself to trust in the yellow fox's wisdom, she couldn't put her own conscience to rest, knowing that she herself had pressed the button. "What have I done?" Tabitha asked herself, pushing up her glasses to wipe her eyes on her shirt sleeve. "I'll never be able to explain myself. There must've been another way…"

* * *

 

Tails awoke, feeling a sense of weightlessness, pain, and an encroaching sensation of numbing cold as he opened his eyes. In the distance, he could see the blue and green planet before him, glimmering in the sunlight. "Well, talk about shooting for the moon," he thought as he slowly removed himself from the moon rock he was embedded in. The remains of the Chaos Energy that had been transferred to his body through the Sonic Driver was beginning to wane, letting the numbing cold of space begin to chill his body.

"Damn. That's beautiful," Ring commented.

"Ring, I thought I told you to stay with the Tabitha and Lèo on the Typhoon."

"Come on, you think I'm gonna let you hog all the glory, partner? I couldn't help wanting to hat was pretty cool, you gotta admit."

Tails nodded, smiling. "Yeah, well, it can't last forever. It's getting pretty cold out here, and I can't exactly survive in space without the energy of the Chaos Emeralds. Besides, everyone's probably worrying their heads off. Whatcha say to heading back?"

"Sounds good. Do you know how?"

Tails held his hands out in front of him, clutching the green and blue Chaos Emeralds in each hand. "Eh, I've seen Sonic and Shadow do it a few times on occasion. It can't be that hard, right?"

"Whatever. Just don't get us lost or killed."

Gripping the two Chaos Emeralds, Tails locked his eyes on the planet below. With a few soundless words, the yellow fox disappeared in a flash of light.

* * *

 

**Two weeks later:**

Saito stood straight in his knight's cloak, doing his best to contain himself as the honorary processional passed by, carrying a list of names of the fallen soldiers and students to the front of the throne room for Queen Henrietta to read. Louise and Kirche were at his side, with Tabitha, Ilococoo, and Lèontine sitting further down the aisle from them, having avoided everyone but each other for several days at a time. All around the throne room, veteran knights took off their helmets in respect as Queen Henrietta received the list, taking a moment to look it over before rolling it up and beginning her speech.

"Ladies and gentlemen, today is a sad day," she began, bowing her head in respect. "There is not a single man or woman among us today who have not lost a close friend or family member in the brutal war against the dark invaders. Only thanks to the sacrifice of those who gave their lives so that you all could continue to fight with all your strength, mind, and heart, were we able overcome the enemy. While the list of the fallen is great, with each and every man and woman named a hero, there is one in particular I wish to recognize. We know him as Miles Prower, or perhaps Tails for those of you who knew him personally."

At the mention of Tails' name, heads bowed in respect. "For those of you who knew him personally, he was a… man, I suppose is the correct term, a man of courage," Henrietta continued, pausing a moment to collect herself. "He never left his friends behind, no matter the risk. He fought for what was right, and gave his life willingly to those he trusted and loved, as he demonstrated with his effort in Gotha. As I understand it, the finishing blow from his personal craft was, in fact, himself being launched at the enemy. Despite our thorough search of the enemy vehicle's remains, there were no traces of our beloved young fox. Today, we will honor his sacrifice and the sacrifice of all of our fallen friends and family with the dedication of the day of the battle as a national holiday, so that we may always remember them and keep them in our he-"

Suddenly, a blinding flash filled the room, followed by a loud yelp. As the light subsided, Saito leaned out into the central aisle to get a look at the source of the commotion. There, in the center of the throne room, was Tails sprawled out face-first on the ground, holding a blue and green gem in either hand. Dirty and tired, the fox crawled to his feet, rubbing his face as he looked around to get his bearings. "Whoa, hey guys. Am I late for the party?" he asked, looking at all the familiar faces as they stared at him in awe, as if a ghost had appeared before their eyes. "What, is there something on my face still? I haven't had a bath for what, a couple of days now? Sorry, but Chaos Control took a little getting used to, to say the least."

Suddenly, the room broke into a deafening roar of cheering and applause. Saito pushed past Kirche out into the aisle, rushing up to greet the fox, but Tabitha and Lèontine beat him there. He stood aside while he waited for the two girls to finish having their moment before stepping up to shake the fox's gloved hand. "It's great to see you again, Tails. Why am I not surprised you're still alive?" he asked.

Tails stepped back, wounded by the Japanese boy's words. "Do you really have that little faith in my work? Well excuuuuuse me, princess, but I'd like to see you try to do all the ballistics calculations for low-orbiting satellites with nothing but ballpark estimates for figures, on the fly, and get it right," he said with a grin.

"Fair enough," Saito conceded, holding up his hands in defeat. "So, where'd you get those?" he asked, pointing toward the two Chaos Emeralds.

"Long story short, I used the power of the Chaos Emeralds from the cannon to use Chaos Control twice when I ripped through the dragon and the ship, grabbing the Chaos Emeralds from each. With time constraints numbering less than a few minutes on each Chaos Control, the fact that I managed to find both of them before running out of energy and being launched into space was luckier than winning the million-dollar lottery once a day for life. I wouldn't be living if I hadn't."

Saito let out a low whistle. "Well then, mister 'Chosen One', what next?"

Tails looked around at the expectant crowd, then back at Saito. "I dunno about you guys, but I could go for a bath, a nap, and some time to chill out. So, I'm headed home to the Academy to get some R and R on the Blue Typhoon. I'll leave you all to whatever you were doing before I barged in, now. See you all at home," he said. Holding the two Chaos Emeralds high, he let out a triumphant "Chaos Control!" and disappeared in a bright flash as quickly as he'd arrived, leaving the crowd stunned and amazed.

"Flashy little guy, ain't he?" Derflinger remarked.

"Yeah, well, it can't be helped for someone like him, I guess," Saito replied, looking around the room as the crowd sat in awkward silence. "I guess we just… go back to mourning, or something?" he mumbled.

"Of course, you idiot!" Louise hissed. "It's not like Tails was the only one we were crying for."

Looking down the aisle, Saito watched as Tabitha, Ilococoo and Lèontine slipped out of their seats, making their way for the door, nodding before returning his attention to Henrietta as she attempted to start up her speech once more…

* * *

 

Two botched Chaos Controls later, Tails popped into existence in the control room of the Blue Typhoon, still hovering over the Academy where the girls had left it after the fight. Noticing that the perimeter defense system was still live as turrets swiveled aboutas they looked for targets, he walked over to his main control console and began typing away, setting the two Chaos Emeralds aside. As he shut down the defense system and punched in the codes to stow the Sonic Driver back below deck, he pulled up the thruster adjustment screen and began maneuvering the craft out away from the Academy, setting the Typhoon down in the scorched, pitch-black remains of the field surrounding the school. "They're gonna need a lot of magic to take care of the landscaping, I bet," he joked as he looked out over the blackened forest toward the distant remains of the dragon and the alien mothership.

"Well, that should do it," he thought as the ship settled down with a brief shake, the bubble shield briefly shimmering into existence around the ship before shutting down. "Let's see… next up is a shower, I suppose," he added as he looked over himself, taking a moment to pick at spots in his fur matted down with dirt and mud. He hopped out of his chair and exited the control room, strolling down the hall as he made his way through the craft to his own quarters. One room caught his eye, in particular, forcing him to pause for a moment. He punched in his code for the door, waiting for the metal door to open as the keypad turned green.

With a brief mechanical click of a lock, the metal door slid out of Tails' way. He stepped into what appeared to be a small ballroom, with colorful paper chains draped across the ceiling and long-since deflated balloons littering the floor. Lines of colorful paper-mache flowers crossed the walls and bordered the pair of observation windows, providing much-needed color to the otherwise bland silver-grey metal walls. Across the room from the door, a set of destroyed drums and speakers sat upon a stage with multi-colored spotlights and a large sign spelling out "Thank you, everybody!" in large block-font paper letters hanging above it.

"What's all of this?" Ring asked in Tails' mind. "Looks like some sort of party you had here."

"It's… just an old relic I refused to clean up after we lost Cosmo," Tails admitted, hiding a brief burst of sad nostalgia behind a smile. "She tried to host a surprise party for us in here, but then Knuckles came in and ruined it all when he got mad." He let out a short laugh as he stepped into the room, looking around at the dust-covered, preserved remains of this old memory. "I remember Knucks was FURIOUS, because Charmy had drawn all over his face with a permanent marker while he was napping. He came in with his shovel claws attachment all sharpened up and started throwing punches like a madman. Punched out the surface of these drums, I remember," he said.

"Sounds like you had a good time, then?"

Tails nodded. "Yeah. Probably the best time I ever got to have with Cosmo. Everything else was all doom-and-gloom, what with the Metarex, Shadow, and who knows who else wanted her dead. The party was about the only quality time I ever got to spend with her."

"But you have Tabitha now, right?" Ring replied.

"Had," Tails responded, a note of bitterness in his voice. "Now that I have the Chaos Emeralds and the Typhoon, I should be able to get home. Tabitha has to stay behind to be the Queen, so…" he trailed off. Suddenly, he nodded and turned back toward the door. "You know? Yeah. I have Tabitha. That's not to say I don't love Cosmo, but… I'd rather not get all depressed about it again."

Ring let out a short *hrrmmph* in agreement. "Good plan. So, how soon do we set sail?"

Tails stepped out into the hallway, sealing the door behind him. "Well, if the gravity-wave analyzer I left running in my workshop recorded the data from the explosion when the Typhoon arrived, I can probably punch in the coordinates and get on my way right now. If it didn't, then… screw it, I'm sure it did. I'll stick around a few days to say my proper farewells, maybe rig up some parting gifts. But first, a shower."

"Considering all that crap you fell into trying to warp across the planet twenty-something times, I'd probably consider airing out the entire ship by now. Thank Brimir I can't smell."

"Oh, shut up!" Tails laughed, taking off down the hall. "Let's see, what would make a good gift…"


	116. Season 4 Chapter 33

Looking up from his work, Tails wiped his forehead with the back of his gloved hand, setting down the black Robo-Grips and shutting the engine service hatch. "That should do it!" he thought aloud as he looked down at his wristcomm. "Right on time, too!" he added, stepping away from the airplane to admire his work and double-check that everything was loaded onto the elevator platform. "Let's see… Tabitha's present, check…" he thought as he ran through a mental checklist of everyone's presents. Confident that everything was ready and accounted for, he stepped onto the platform with his scimitar at his side and a fresh cloak, courtesy of Queen Henrietta, on his back. With a press of a button on his wristcomm, the elevator platform began to rise out of the ground, the sound of the hard-working hydraulic lifts filling Tails' ears.

As the platform reached ground level, Tails could see everyone waiting anxiously for the fox's grand entrance. He stepped off the platform as it reached ground level, beckoning his friends forward. "So, let's get started," he said, the crowd of students closing in around him. "Everyone knows me and Saito are leaving, so… no big speech. But, I do have some stuff I'd like to leave with you all," he announced. "First up, Saito."

The blue-hoodie-clad Japanese boy stepped forward, a big grin stretched across his face. "As you can already guess, the biggest one is for you," Tails joked, nodding toward the plane. "I finally fixed up the Zero for you, with a few… special improvements, if you will," he said, stepping over toward the aircraft. "I rebuilt the engine with stronger, lighter components and increased the cylinder capacity. Also, I swapped out the cannon and machine gun barrels, fixed the landing gear, and replaced the old propellers with a more efficient design. Overall, it should see about a twenty percent increase in top speed, ten percent in acceleration and maximum climb rate."

"And the logo on the back, I see," Saito added, nodding toward the twin-tailed logo overlayed on the iconic red circle of the Japanese air force. "A nice touch. I like it."

"I might have a hard time remembering if it's my own work if I don't," Tails replied. He stepped forward and shook Saito's hand, taking a moment to hug the young man. "We'll get it out of here as soon as I get everything else distributed. Speaking of which, let's see…" Tails added, turning to dig into the pile of goodies he'd collected. "Oh yeah, Louise! Can't forget something for you!" he exclaimed, pulling out a small rectangular box about two feet long.

Suddenly, Saito's face drained of color as the pink-haired girl stepped forward to receive her present. "Tails, if that's…"

The Mobian grinned and nodded as Louise opened the box, revealing a brand-new riding crop. "That one was Ring's idea, with Derflinger's approval, so don't blame me for that one. Just don't give her a chance to use it, alright?"

"Don't worry, I'm sure the time will come," Louise added, her menacing words causing Saito to cringe. "Thank you, Tails!"

"Don't sweat it. Next up, Kirche!"

"Oh?" she said, eyeing the fox as he turned to pick up another box, larger this time than the one Louise's new crop had been stored in. Tails picked up the square box by a carrying handle and handed it to the red-haired girl, letting her undo the metal clasps and open the folding case.

Inside, an ornate chessboard composed of a strange black substance and clear glass for tiles, backlit through the glass by the yellow glow of a Power Ring. Mounted in the lid were an array of chess pieces, with glass and the same black substance as the chessboard composing the white and black team respsectively. "I managed to get out to the dragon's body and salvaged some of the scales to make up the black pieces for the board and one of the teams," he explained, pointing toward the chess pieces in the lid. "Also, I built a strong magnetic base into them, so you can just fold the case shut and you won't lose your game. The Power Ring providing the backlight shouldn't ever go out, either."

"Aww, it's perfect!" Kirche replied, shutting the case and tucking it under her arm. She stepped forward and gave the fox a long, awkward hug. "I'll miss you, Miles. Make sure to come back soon, alright?"

"I will, don't worry," Tails replied, stepping back onto the hangar platform. "Next up, professor Colbert."

"Miles, you shouldn't have!" the bald man replied as he stepped forward out of the crowd of students.

"Don't worry, professor. This one's pretty simple. I'm leaving you the workshop, and, with Saito's consent, the mansion in Ornielles. I figured you could use a good hideaway for your research, if Kirche starts driving you crazy."

At this, the crowd gasped. Colbert simply smiled, nodding in appreciation. "Thank you, Miles… This means more to me than anything," he responded, hardly able to contain himself. The fox could have sworn that he saw tears of joy in the professor’s eyes.

Tails nodded and turned back to the platform, picking up the last of the goods. "And, last but not least, for Tabitha," he announced, turning back to the crowd with a smaller box in hand as the blue-haired girl stepped out of the crowd. "This one's a present both from me and Kirche, so you can thank her, too."

Tabitha received the plain wooden box, lifting the lid to take a look at its contents. Reaching inside, she withdrew a solid-gold clasp with Tails' signature logo pressed into the front, highlighted with a black dragon-scale inlay. "Kirche provided the gold for that one," Tails explained. "Just a little something to remember me by, I suppose."

Nodding, Tabitha set the clasp back into the box and continued to fish around, withdrawing a grey handgun and several magazines. She looked at the handgun curiously, looking over its asthetics with a keen eye. "It's the same as the one you used to have, before the whole Al Hambra incident. I figured if I can't be around to help you, at least that would," Tails added, watching as she put the handgun back into the box. Setting the box down, Tabitha stepped forward and embraced Tails in a silent hug, holding him tight for a solid minute.

As soon as Tabitha released him, Tails stepped back and looked around at the crowd. "Well, that should about do it. I guess it's about time I hit the road," he said, checking his wristcomm. The small screen was packed with data, the device's storage capacity packed to its limits with the navigational data downloaded from the gravity-wave analyzer he had finished before the big battle. Thankfully, it had captured the entry of the Blue Typhoon, and with the help of the starship’s powerful computers, he was able to easily decode the information into travel data.

"Hey!" A voice rang out over the murmur of the crowd. Looking up, Tails watched as Lèontine muscled her way to the front of the group. She was wearing a fresh navy-blue dress and her usual leather shoes and tube socks, but was carrying a leather bag over her shoulder. "No farewell present for me?" she joked, smirking at the yellow two-tailed fox.

"Did it sound like I was saying goodbye to you?" Tails retorted. "Anyway, let's go get the ship fired up."

The herd of students slowly migrated out to the torched field in front of the Academy, watching as Tails walked over to his ship. He took a moment to look over the Blue Typhoon, mulling over several thoughts. "Well, I guess this is it," he muttered to himself as he walked over to the craft with Lèontine at his side. Cycling away from the travel data file on his wristcomm, he managed to locate and activate the software that controlled the multitude of loading bays around the craft. With the press of a button, a well-concealed airlock on the side of the craft slid open, allowing a loading ramp to slide down from the side of the craft. Tails and Lèontine began making their way up the ramp, looking back at the crowd of students and waving as they cheered the two onward.

Suddenly, Tails felt Lèontine shake his shoulder. "Look who it is!" she said, nodding forward toward the ship. Turning around, Tails looked up to see a familiar blue-haired girl standing at the top of the ramp, accompanied by her taller Rhyme Dragon familiar in human form. He took a step back in shock, nearly falling down the ramp as he twisted around to look at Tabitha standing among the crowd of students. "What the f… okay, I'm super confused. So I wasn't totally tripping out when I thought something was up at the coronation?!" Tails stuttered, looking back at the Tabitha clone standing at the top of the ramp. "Okay, okay, am I at least right in assuming YOU'RE the real Tabitha?" he asked, pointing at Tabitha at the top of the ramp.

Nodding, Tabitha reached into a small hidden pocket sewn into the inside of her cloak, withdrawing a worn, crumpled letter. She handed the piece of parchment to Tails, waiting for him to open and read it. "The letter from Ornielles," she explained as Tails looked over the letter curiously, mouthing a surprised "ah" as he finally recognized and things clicked into place.

"Let's see here…" he muttered as he unfolded the letter, reading it carefully:

_To a Mrs. Tabitha, Resident of the Tristain Academy of Magic,_

_I am writing this letter with the intention of completing two objectives. Primarily, I wish to express my sorrow regarding the conditions to which you were detained in, as well as the recent passing of your mother and uncle (although I believe it to be a safe presumption that the latter of the two means little to you). I hope for you to understand that I had no means of easing your stay in the custody of your uncle, due to a contract that we had previously arranged regarding my indentured servitude to that vile wretch of a man. What I had done was mandatory; nothing more or less than what I had to do in order to obey my contract. Regarding the passing of your mother: I feel deeply ashamed for having supplied Joseph with the elemental Fire Stones used in the siege of Romalia, regardless of the fact that I had no choice due to the previously mentioned contract. I understand that you loved your mother very much, and most likely feel nothing less than the deepest rage toward your uncle and myself for having ruined, and ultimately taken, her life. Because of this, I wish to offer my services in an attempt to correct the wrongdoings I have committed. The second topic of this letter addresses this matter._

_Having seen firsthand the compassion your familiar, Miles “Tails” Prower has for you, I understand that you treat him as family and thus love him to some extent. I also understand that, with the passing of your mother, it falls upon you to take up the mantle of the Queen of Gallia, which would separate you from your Familiar as he attempts to return home. Having spent much time around your mother, I would have you know that she was a strong woman; there were several such instances where she would, momentarily, break free of the effects of the potion used on her so long ago. Through short-lived conversations with your mother, I have learned that you are, in fact, a product of a twin birth. While normal Gallian tradition would have the lesser of the two children executed to prevent power struggles for the throne, your mother refused to have the child executed, instead having her sent to live with another lord, who had lost their child due to natural causes at birth, as a surrogate child. Through much effort tracking what leads I had recorded from the conversations with your mother, I have successfully located your sister, named Josette, and have brought her to the Gallian capital. Make of this what you will, but consider this as an opportunity to leave the nobility, if you so desire._

_If you wish to take advantage of this opportunity, please join me in Lutèce as soon as you are available. We can arrange to to perform a memory transfer, so as to avoid suspicion if Josette is to take the throne._

_On behalf of the Elvish tribes,_

_Vitartial_

Tossing the letter aside, Tails rushed forward and hugged Tabitha, who dropped her staff in surprise. Ilococoo let out small squeal of delight and joined in on the hug, happy for her master and friend. Giddy with excitement, Tails stepped back and beckoned the three girls into the craft. "Come on! There's tons of stuff I've got to show you guys. You'll love it!"

Tabitha nodded, the ends of her mouth curling up into a short smile as she picked up her staff and took off after the yellow fox, with Lèontine and Ilococoo close behind.

* * *

 

With a burst of light and a deafening roar that filled the control deck, the Blue Typhoon leaped into hyperdrive through the modified wormhole created by the Typhoon's warpdrive. What seemed like merely seconds of dazzling color passed before the Typhoon exploded into view once more, the light subsiding. Outside the glass dome of the control room, the city of Mobotropolis stretched out before him, the castle stretching high into the sky above the modern streets filled with rushing cars. "Home sweet home!" Tails cried in victory, raising his fist, as he brought the Typhoon's speed down a few notches to avoid breaking local ordnances regarding aircraft. "It's bad enough that I warped in this close to the city. Sally's gonna have my head for all the noise complaints, I'm sure," he thought, shrugging indifferently to himself.

"Whoaaaa, this is so cool!" Ilococoo chirped up, hopping out of her seat and rushing over to press her face against the glass for a better look below. "It's like Gallia, but… shiny!"

Suddenly, a loud warning tone arose from the communications-dedicated control console Ilococoo had been sitting at. With a brief flash, a projector mounted into the wall behind Tails flickered into life, displaying an obese, oddly-shaped man garbed in red against the inside of the glass dome. "Ohoho, my!" the man chortled, leaning into the screen as if to get a better look. "It looks like the yellow rat has returned!"

Tails leaned back in his seat, crossing his arms. "Yeah, I'm back, Eggman. Haven't missed a beat, have you? Is the usual welcoming party ready, I suppose? Let me guess… you're right behind me, guns armed and ready."

"Ooh, I love parties!" Ilococoo added, looking up at the screen. "Who's that guy?"

"Yes, well…" the man said, sitting back in his chair. "I assume Tails will do the introductions later. Anyhow, you know me. Things have been rather… low-key, shall we say. Specifically, the Chaos Emeralds are missing. Neither myself nor your wretched friends have been able to find th-"

"Oh, you mean the seven Emeralds I have sitting in the reactor core of the Typhoon right now?" Tails interjected, smirking. "Yeah. Do me a favor, Eggman, and call it for the day, before I turn this ship around and remind you what the Sonic Driver can do at full power. The only thing I'm in the mood for right now is to go home and grab me a chili-dog."

"Right, erm… Fine, you win for today," Eggman conceded, growling to himself away from the screen. "Expect Bokkun to drop the usual message by later this evening, I suppose."

"I'd think you were going senile if it didn't come," Tails retorted. "See ya next month!"

"Shut up!" Eggman roared, cutting the call connection. Now that the classic, near-monthly scuffle with Eggman had been resolved, a flood of giddy nostalgia filled Tails as he sat up in his seat, punching in a set of GPS coordinates for home. The craft took off on its own, the autopilot software kicking in to bring the Typhoon back to its hangar.

"So, who was that oh-so-pleasant and handsome guy?" Lèontine asked, rolling her eyes. "You'd think nature could only be so one-sided in its blessings."

Tails let out a short laugh. "That was Dr. Eggman, world-conquering scientist extraordinaire. He's my competition when it comes to building cool stuff, I suppose. Keeps me on my toes, for sure, but he's gotten pretty repetitive recently. You can almost time his 'surprise' attacks down to a tee, because he more or less relies on his robots for scheduling. He sucks at time management. I guess it's good to see not much has changed since I left."

Within a few minutes, the Typhoon was pulling up outside of Tails' house, at the edge of a large clearing not too far from Mobotropolis. As the Typhoon slid into position, Tails watched as the ground parted below the Typhoon, revealing the interior of his underground docking station. The Typhoon slowly descended into the hole, coming to a stop as a network of retaining arms reached out from the walls to secure the vessel. Electric lights flickered into life as the massive hangar blast doors crawled shut, cutting off the stream of sunlight from above and sealing the craft inside.

"Alrighty, now we're really home!" Tails announced, hopping up out of his seat. "Come on, I'll show you guys around. We'll get you guys situated in the two guest rooms for now."

"The sooner we get out of here, the better," Lèontine said, hopping up from her seat. "Just seeing the grass disappear as we fell chilled my blood."

"Right, well, we'll save the tour of the workshop for later then."

The four disembarked the Typhoon, making their way across the floor of the cavernous workshop to the elevator. Stepping inside, the metal box shot up through the elevator shaft at the touch of a button, arriving at ground-level with a soft peal of a digital bell sound. Tails stepped out of the elevator and began pointing around at different rooms as he went. "That one is one of the bedrooms, same with that one there… That one's mine, and the kitchen and living room are this way."

Walking into the living room, Tails stopped dead in his tracks as he caught sight of something on the dust-covered sofa. A large framed photo of Tails and several of his friends sat on the sofa, surrounded by a mix of wilted and fresh flowers. "Oh, shit," he thought as he walked over and picked up the photo, carrying it over to a shelf near the TV across the room. "They must've thought I died…" he muttered to himself.

Suddenly, a series of loud, frantic knocking erupted from the door. Tails trotted over and undid the deadbolt, pulling the door open. The crackling of the doorframe's bone-dry weatherproofing giving way filling his ears, reminding him of the house's much-needed maintenance after his extended absence.

Without warning, Tails was slammed backwards as the door flew open, followed by the rush of footsteps as a blue blur rushed to embrace him. "Hey, buddy!" Sonic exclaimed, crushing his best friend in a strong bear-hug. "Whoa, who are your friends?" he added, looking up to find Tabitha with her staff at the ready, a cloud of razor-sharp icicles hovering around her.

"Oh, uh, yeah. That's Tabitha, the girl with the staff threatening you with icicles. The other blue-haired girl is Ilococoo, and the third girl is Lèontine."

Sonic let go of Tails and stretched out his hand toward the three girls. "Hi there! The name's Sonic. Nice to meet 'ya!"

Sensing that the group was no longer under physical harm, Tabitha dispelled the ice crystals and took Sonic's hand, allowing him to shake it vigorously. "Thanks for bringing back Tails in one piece. I don't know what we'd do without him, most of the time."

"Heck, I'm pretty sure we needed him than he needed us, it seems," Lèontine added, taking Sonic's hand after he was done with Tabitha and shaking it. "I'm his familiar. She's his master. Nice to meet you!"

"Don't forget me, partner!" Ring chimed in, the metal mouthpiece of his blade clanking away at Tails' hip.

Sonic looked back at Tails, shooting him a look of confusion. "Tails, what the heck are they talking about? Am I tripping out, or did that sword just talk?"

"Yeah, the talking sword is Ring. As for the master and familiar stuff, it's a long story…" Tails replied, rubbing the back of his head in embarrassment.

"Hey, I've got all the time in the world," the blue hedgehog said, picking up the flowers and setting them on a glass coffee table in the center of the room before flopping down on the sofa.

"Come on, feet off the sofa! And watch your quills! I don't wanna replace the upholstery again," Tails complained as he jogged over to the kitchen, grabbing a couple of extra chairs from the dining table and hauling them into the living room. He offered the chairs to the girls and ducked back into the kitchen, returning with a couple glasses of tapwater. "So, where to start…" Tails began, kicking back in his favorite recliner chair near the door.


	117. Afterlogue

Tails bit his lip as he quickly pulled a pot of hot, molten choclate out of the oven, quickly setting it on the stovetop before shaking his hands to try and cool them off. "Damn, I need to remind Cream to bring back my oven mitts next time she comes over," he thought as he poked his head out into the living room to check up on everything. At the coffee table, Ilococoo was thoroughly engrossed in helping Cream and Cheese with making all sorts of decorations for the party coming up. At the dining room table on the other side of the kitchen, Fang and Rouge were struggling to keep up with Lèontine in a game of blackjack as Knuckles dealt the cards fast and furious, his massive gloved fists shaking the table with each card. Back in Tails' bedroom, he could hear Sonic practicing his guitar to pass the time.

"Alright, Miles, your move," Eggman said over the small wireless television Bokkun had dropped by earlier that day. In front of the TV, the wireless chess board updated Eggman's move to the button grid. Tails took a brief look at the chocolate before turning to the chessboard. It only took him a few seconds to make up his mind, tapping one of the digital icons representing his piece and the position he wanted to move it to.

"Done. Should update here in a second," Tails replied. "Give me a second, I've gotta get the milkshakes made." He turned on one of the eyes of the stove and set the pot of melted chocolate on it before turning to the refridgerator, extracting a large tub of mint ice cream, a gallon of milk, and two bags of chocolate chips – a bag of "fake chocolate" that he could safely eat without getting sick, and bag of regular chips for everyone else. Setting the ingredients aside by his custom milkshake blender, he opened up a cabinet above the fridge and pulled down a dozen diner-style milkshake glasses. Adding several scoops of ice cream and a bit of milk to each glass, he took turns hooking each glass up to the mixer, tossing in a handful of chocolate chips and a few spoonfuls of the molten chocolate to each one before setting them back in the freezer to keep cool. "I wonder how long until Amy gets back with Tabitha. I know I told her what time she gets out of school, but… knowing her, she probably got lost doing some shopping," he thought, shaking his head in annoyance as he returned the molten chocolate to the stove. "I still can't believe Sally's making Tabitha go to school. She's probably ruining every grade curve in school, like me and Rotor used to. I don't even think starting her in senior year is slowing her down," he added with a smile.

Suddenly, he could hear the front door open, followed with a loud "Hi, everyone!" as Amy announced her presence. Poking his head through the kitchen doorway, Tails could see Amy cruising into the room, followed by a storm of floating paper bags from one of the many department stores in Mobotropolis. The bags floated into the room and gently landed on the sofa as Tabitha terminated her levitation spell and stepped into the room, closing the door behind you. "Hey, Tabitha!" he said, noticing a piece of white paper in her hand. "What's that paper? Report card?"

Tabitha nodded and walked over, setting her staff on the sofa and handing him the paper. Tails took a brief look, scanning the page as quickly as he could. Of all her classes, only gym was a B+ - everything else was a solid A. To his surprise, she had scored a perfect A+ on her physics, something that he'd personally given her a crash-course in over the semester to get her caught up. "Geez, Tabitha! I might need to hand over the keys to the workshop, at this rate," he joked, setting the paper on the kitchen counter and giving her a brief hug.

"Decorations?" she asked as Tails let her go. "What for?"

"It's your birthday, of course!" Lèontine called over her shoulder, not bothering to look up from her game.

"We had to do a little work converting the dates, since the calendars here and in Halkeginia aren't the same according to Lèo and Ilococoo," Tails explained. "She told us it's been a long time since you've had a proper party, but that's beside the point. Anyway, Cream chopped up some fruit from her mom's garden, and I melted some chocolate for fondue. I also just finished up some milkshakes in the freezer. We were thinking we'd put on a movie, and head into town to that steak place you like for dinner afterward."

Tabitha nodded and walked over to the sofa, picking up her staff. Chanting a few words, the bags levitated into the air and followed her through the halls back to Tails' room. The sound of Sonic's wailing guitar filling the house for a brief moment as Tabitha promptly evacuated the room after dropping off the bags.

"You know, I don't think she's homesick in the slightest. I'm surprised," Ring commented in Tails' mind.

Tails nodded. "Yeah, she hasn't been acting up at night in the slightest. I'm glad; I was afraid she would have a sudden fit in her sleep or something, being so far from home."

"You probably know it by now, but you ARE home for her, bro."

"Yep."

"Hey, Tails!" Rouge called, stepping away from the table. "Are we ready to start the movie or what? I'd like to not lose the rest of my paycheck to your demon girlfriend here!"

Tails nodded. "Yeah, come on in guys! I'll go grab the movie, so come grab a seat," he replied, taking off down the hall past Tabitha to his room. As soon as he entered, he reached to cover his ears as a wall of sound greeted him, nearly deafening him. "Sonic, come on! We're starting!" he yelled, eventually having to gently kick the blue hedgehog in the knee to get his attention as he jammed out, eyes closed and absorbed in the music.

Sonic looked up and hit the power switch on the small amp he'd been using. "What's that, bro?"

"I swear, you're going to make yourself deaf," the fox said, rolling his eyes. "Go grab a seat, we're starting the movie." He walked over to a bookshelf in the corner of the room and began browsing the collection of DVD's and VCR's he kept stashed away, looking for a suitable selection. "Let's see…  _Grumpy Old Mobians_? Egh, pretty sure that was something I borrowed from Uncle Chuck and forgot to return… Oh yeah, here we go.  _Montana John and the Last Crusade_. Forgot I had even ripped that from a DVD of the Thorndyke's collection on Earth. It's been a while since I've seen it, too."

Checking to see that the disc was still inside the white-label box with "Montana John" scrawled on the front in black pen, he shut the box and walked back to the living room. Everyone was already crowded onto and in front of the sofa, the room dark except for the glow of the blank TV screen. Tails stepped over to the DVD machine attatched to the bottom of the wall-mounted TV, slipping the disc into the machine and using the TV remote to crank up the volume.

Without warning, the house erupted into a dull roar as the "T.H.E.X" logo filled the screen. The sound crescendoed to a house-shaking symphony of digital sound that caused Tails' hair to stand on end as the others cried for him to turn down the volume, drowned out by the home theater speakers he'd rigged up. Tails quickly turned down the volume, grinning at his own stupid mistake as everyone except Tabitha sat in shock, rubbing their ears in an attempt to regain their hearing. "Sorry about that!" Tails said, shrugging as he tossed the remote onto the coffee table.

As the catchy main theme began to play, Tails ducked into the kitchen and yanked open a drawer, fetching a dozen spoons. Withdrawing the chilled milkshakes from the fridge, the liquid chocolate now cooled into hardened swirls, he began stabbing spoons into the shakes and serving them up to his friends, setting aside his own no-chocolate shake for himself. Fetching the cutting board of fruit Cream had prepared and the pot of liquid chocolate, he set his milkshake on the cutting board and carried the desserts out to the coffee table. He undid Ring's sheath and set him on the coffee table behind the cutting board before motioning for Sonic and Amy to scoot over a little. Barely fitting into the tiny space the others could afford to give up, he took a seat on the sofa next to Tabitha and took up his drink, taking a bite of the frosty concoction with a satisfied smile. "now THAT'S what I've been missing!" he said, wiping his mouth on the back of his glove.

Watching with amusement as Cheese, Cream's Chao companion, fluttered over to pick up a strawberry bigger than the yellow dot that floated above its head, Tabitha took her first bite of the milkshake and nodded, surprised by its unique flavor. "Very good," she said, taking another bite.

"Glad you like it!" Tails replied, only to be shushed by the others as the first bits of movie dialogue began. Kicking up his feet onto the edge of the coffee table, he stretched out his hands over the back of the sofa, resting his left hand on Tabitha's shoulder. He could feel her lean up against him, resting her head against his shoulder; a slight flutter filled his heart that caused him to smile. "It's good to be home," he thought.

**Author's Note:**

> Ladies and Gentlemen, the story is complete in its' edited form! As much as I enjoyed writing this story, it feels relieving to finally bring something to a close for a change. I'd like to apologize for the extended periods between sets of chapters toward the end, as I spent a lot of time toying with the ending in separate documents and just couldn't find a closing that felt like an improvement to the original (and let's be honest, I procrastinated a lot, too). 
> 
> With any luck, I'll be able to devote a bit more time to writing out a long-term plot guide for "Rusted Hell", my Planetside 2 fanfiction, and perhaps a few smaller sub-fictions as direct sequels to this in the future. Fun fact, I had originally planned to write a full-length sequel for this! Maybe someday... but at the moment, I can only really manage one story at a time, if that.
> 
> Thanks for reading! It means a lot to me that you've followed this story through to the end.


End file.
